Is it possible to redirect all subdomains except www to a specific directory?

Question

I would like any directory *.example.com (bar.example.com, foo.example.com, etc..) to direct to the folder /home/user/htdocs/subdir/

www.example.com and example.com should remain unaffected.

Is this possible with htacecss, or another route?

Answer 1

You could do this by setting up two virtual hosts via the Apache configuration. For example:

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /home/user/htdocs
  ServerName www.example.com example.com
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /home/user/htdocs/subdir
  ServerName *.example.com
</VirtualHost>

Answer 2

After the declaring in your Apache configuration file the directives for www.example.com and example.com, you can set an extra VirtualHost entry with any subdomain as ServerName and a wildcard ServerAlias like so to point every subdomain there.

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /home/user/htdocs/subdir
  ServerName foobar.example.com
  ServerAlias *.example.com
</VirtualHost>

Note: You must declare a servername (any would do)