subdomain.domain.com works, but still accessible via domain.com/site

Question

I've got a site installed at, for argument's sake, /var/www/site, and have a subdomain set up so that it can be accessed via subdomain.domain.com.

How do I stop it also being accessed via domain.com/site? This obviously works as it is a subdirectory in the root htmldir of /var/www.

Will Google currently see this as two different sites, too?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You could use a rewrite rule to make sure the content is only accessed through the subdomain. Create a .htaccess file in the site directory that you want to work only through it's subdomain:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^subdomain\.domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ http://subdomain.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

As for the Google question, Google generally sees subdomains as separate sites as far as I know.

Answer 2

Regarding the google thing, your site will be penalized for SEO ranking as google will see it as two different entity and will negative rank your site.

Also, I am not even sure why you are running the other domain from the same document root. The best solution what I will say is to move it out of main site's document root and create a new document root somewhere else, and update your virtual host settings. I don't see a good reason here to even mess with the rewrite rule, when you don't need it at all (Unless there is some specific reason why you did it which I am missing and would like to understand).