After setting $base_url, I can only access the front page

Question

I have Drupal installed in a subdirectory of public_html on BlueHost.

It looks like this: /www/drupal7/mywebsite.

I want to run the site out of the mywebsite subdirectory instead of www. However, I want the URL to appear to be http://mywebsite.com.

Here is the suggested .htaccess configuration from BlueHost. This is the .htaccess for the www/ directory; I am using the default Drupal 7 .htaccess in Drupal's subdirectory.

# BlueHost.com 
# .htaccess main domain to subdirectory redirect 
# Do not change this line. 
RewriteEngine on 
# Change example.com to be your main domain. 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?example.com$ 
# Change 'subdirectory' to be the directory you will use for your main domain. 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/subdirectory/ 
# Don't change the following two lines. 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d 
# Change 'subdirectory' to be the directory you will use for your main domain. 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subdirectory/$1 
# Change example.com to be your main domain again. 
# Change 'subdirectory' to be the directory you will use for your main domain 
# followed by / then the main file for your site, index.php, index.html, etc. 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?example.com$ 
RewriteRule ^(/)?$ subdirectory/index.html [L]

This successfully allows me to use Drupal from the subdirectory, but the URLs look like this:

http://www.mywebsite.com/drupal7/mywebsite/PAGE

But I want it to look like this:

http://www.mywebsite.com/PAGE

This post on Drupal.org suggests that the $base_url must be set in default/settings.php. I set the $base_url to "http://mywebsite.com"; however, when I do this, whatever link I click, I am redirected to the front page.

Is there an additional step? What am I missing?

Answer 1

It sounds like the answer from Oleg Ivanov would work. However, if you want to tackle this with a .htaccess approach, the following works for me. Find and replace SUBDIRECTORY with your subdirectory.

Amend your Drupal's .htaccess with the following:

RewriteBase /

# homepage redirect
RewriteRule ^$ /SUBDIRECTORY/index.php?q= [L]

# if directory or regular file...
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} =/favicon.ico
# stop here
RewriteRule ^ - [L]

# if a regular file in SUBDIRECTORY directory
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/SUBDIRECTORY/%{REQUEST_URI} -f
RewriteRule .* SUBDIRECTORY/$0 [L]

# Redirect everything to /SUBDIRECTORY
RewriteRule .* /SUBDIRECTORY/index.php?q=$0 [QSA]

Answer 2

Use the default .htaccess shipped with drupal and

1. Make sure line 110 is commented like this

   # RewriteBase /

2. Uncomment and edit line 106 to read like this

   RewriteBase /drupal7/mywebsite

Answer 3

I host several of my Drupal websites on BlueHost, and I've achieved basically what you're asking without changing any of .htaccess files:

here's what I do - (I have a separate Drupal installation for each site for a number of reasons, although I believe the same can be done with a multi-site install)

I have a Drupal installation in /public_html/mywebsite;

I add http://mywebsite.com to my account via "Assign Domain", as an Addon Domain -

in Step 4 - "Choose Addon Directory and Sub-domain" - I choose "Use an existing directory" (from a list of sub-directories under public_html) - mywebsite; (it also appears as mywebsite.mymainaccountdomain.com - so be it, I just don't use it)

after all the changes propagate through BlueHost servers' "insides" (sometimes takes up to 15 minutes, especually for 'www' redirect to catch on) -

my site is accessible as both http://mywebsite.com and http://www.mywebsite.com and all its pages load as expected - http://www.mywebsite.com/page and so on

hope this helps