htaccess mod_rewrite Sub-Directory to Sub-Domain

Question

I'm using the following RewriteRule to redirect wildcard sub domains to the corresponding folders in the /users sub-direcotry:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/users/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.+)\.domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %1 !=www [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /users/%1/$1/? [L]

I would like to prevent direct access to the users' folder by 301 redirecting to the sub domain version like this:

www.domain.com/users/username/sub1/sub2/ => username.domain.com/sub1/sub2/

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Since you're stopping the RewriteRule if there's a /users/ as the leading path, then username.domain.com/users/username/sub1/sub2/ would get them there, too - probably not as intended.

Consider changing your existing config for the per-user subdomains to a VirtualDocumentRoot in a wildcarded vhost instead of what's there, to cut down on complexity and reduce the number of regex evaluations needed per request.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName usernames.domain.com
    ServerAlias *.domain.com
    VirtualDocumentRoot /dir/to/users/%1
</VirtualHost>

Then, for the prevention of access to the /users/ directory structure through the normal hostname, apply this to just the main site's config:

RewriteRule ^/users/.*$ - [F]

If you're intent on keeping your existing handling of the subdomains with mod_rewrite, then you'll need to expand that to filter on hostname:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.com$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com$ [NC]   # I'm assuming?
RewriteRule ^/users/.*$ - [F]