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My current .htaccess file looks like this (autogenerated by WP)

$ cat .htaccess
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/healthydebate/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

This is the standard WordPress rewrite setup. The issue I'm having is setting up site relative links within my pages (eg, a footer link pointing to terms-and-conditions.php). When I'm on the home page (ie: blog/index.html) the link works. When I'm on a sub page (ie: blog/categoryname/article-title) the link fails because, being a relative link, it is relative to blog/categoryname (ie: blog/categoryname/terms-and-conditions.php).

Before someone suggests "just use an absolute URL", this is not an option (or a best practice, really) because we are developing on a different domain and server structure than the final deployment server, so all absolute URLs would need to be rewritten every time we deploy.

To make the issue a little more complicated, we must also be root-directory-path agnostic. That is to say that even though the blog currently resides at /blog/clientsite/ it may eventually be moved to some other directory, for example /clientsite/ or even /STAGING/blogs/clientsite/ so RewriteBase may be a little tricky.

I'm sure the solution is dead simple, but mod_rewrite is definitely not my strong suit.

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  • Best practice would be to have your development and production environments be identical in every way that matters, no?
    – jgoldschrafe
    Dec 17, 2010 at 18:56
  • Yes, yes it would. In an ideal environment. Although this is off-topic, consider the following scenario: client has their own webserver, the site will be published to their webserver's htdocs (root); we have a DEV box on which multiple sites in development are hosted behind our firewall, this site will be developed at blogs/clientname; we have TEST box on an external server, available to the client in a pw-protected directory, testing site is at STAGING/clientname/blog. It's not ideal for developers or migration, but it's ideal for the customer and for security.
    – Tom Auger
    Dec 18, 2010 at 21:50

2 Answers 2

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You definitely want to be constructing absolute URLs within your footer template, but you don't want to be hardcoding them. You probably want the WordPress function get_bloginfo('wpurl') to get the base URL of your WordPress site as it's specified in your application config, and then stack your relative URL on top of that. It's a straightforward enough function call, but here's the doc anyway:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_bloginfo

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3
  • Excellent info. Can you explain why I would want to be using absolute URLs rather than relative ones?
    – Tom Auger
    Dec 18, 2010 at 21:38
  • Because with mod_rewrite and SEO-friendly URLs, you don't know where you are in your directory hierarchy until you start un-mangling your URLs. Might as well just avoid mangling in the first place.
    – jgoldschrafe
    Dec 19, 2010 at 18:14
  • sigh it's true. I was limited by the Theme, so I rewrote one of its widgets to include get_bloginfo('wpurl') or its twisted echo cousin bloginfo('wpurl'). Certainly simplifies things a log.
    – Tom Auger
    Dec 20, 2010 at 18:23
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You need to add RewriteBase /blog

and remove the 'blog/' portion from the RewriteRule

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /healthydebate/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

When you move the directory in the future, just update the RewriteBase.

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  • Thanks for this. Is there any way to avoid having to rewrite anything? My migration protocol is already pretty lengthy and I would love to avoid adding any extra steps.
    – Tom Auger
    Dec 18, 2010 at 21:40

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