Is there a way to make a URL appear as if it's one directory higher?

No one can seem to answer this simple question in any other forum. It's best to describe it in an example.

Actual article location:
example.com/folder/article.php

Article appears in URL as:
example.com/article.php

I'm not actually moving the file so it's not a simple 301 redirect, I just want it to look like it's at a simpler URL. Thanks in advance.

 

you can not reach directory highr. you can do it with your local copy of your site and the end directory is c drev or something like that , but in the ftp all functions depend of read/write right of your password and your user name and higher directory of your site in ftp is server root and you have no right to se or update that , but i think web admintrator of server he/she can do all with his/her password and username.

 

You're making this way more complicated than it is. Look at the example in the OP, it's very simple. I'm not trying to edit the server root. I want items in my sub-directories to look like they're IN the root folder where I place the folder for that sub-directory and the same place I put my index.php and other files.

 

enable mod_rewrite in Apache & use a .htaccess file to re-write the url

RewriteRule ^/article.php$ /folder/article.php

 

Hello,
you could use .htaccess

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/folder/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /folder/$1
This will redirect everything to /folder/.

 

None of these work. Riquez, your option is doing the exact opposite of what I need. Natcoweb, I don't know what's going on with this option but it displays my pages without the CSS and doesn't do what I want.

 

No it doesnt, it does exactly what you want, I have tested it.
However, you might need to remove the initial / in the paths.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^article.php$ folder/article.php

You have a real directory "folder" & inside a page called "article.php"
With this rule when you link to or type the URL example.com/article.php it will keep that URL but it will actually be re-writing it to the real location of the file /folder/article.php

Note that when you re-write a URL like this, you don't link your HTML to folder/article.php, you link to the re-write : article.php Apache does the rest.

 

So if I have a folder in my root called "sunday" and I want every article in that folder to appear as if it's in the root how would I do that? I don't want to add a new line for every article in the future. I'm trying (.*) and all that but can't get it working properly but I don't know much about Apache anyway.

 

In that case you would be better using something similar to what Natcoweb posted.
But you have a problem - if you have other files outside /folder/ its also going to apply to those.
So if you link to a file in the root directory its going to still assume its actually inside /folder/
You need a way to differentiate between them.

As Natcoweb said:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /folder/$1
could be
RewriteRule ^movie_(.*)$ /folder/$1

Now as long as you make your link with "movie_" at the start it will use the files in /folder/
eg: movie_something.php

Really, you shouldnt need to be creating a new php page for each article. the-town.php, green-hornet.php, dilemma.php, etc.
The sensible way would to have a database of articles & one single page article.php that displays the data for the article.
Then you could use php & apache to re-write the url in a nice way for each article, but only have one php page & one rule.

RewriteRule ^movie_([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+).php$ folder/article.php?name=$1

With the above rule you can have URLs like

example.com/movie_the-green-hornet.php

but the actual script would be
folder/article.php?name=the-green-hornet

article.php would get your database content based on you tagging that article as "the-green-hornet" in the database.

There are more complex ways to do it that are better, but thats just a simple example.

If you are stuck with using /folder/ & multiple articles inside then the simple solution would be just to go with the longer url, but name your folder so it looks sensible.

example.com/movies/the-green-hornet.php
example.com/coming-soon/the-mechanic.php

This is actually better with the folder in the url than without, because it gives more information to the user.


This page is helpful when using mod_rewrite
corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess2.php

 

Thanks but I thought there would be a simple line of code that could take care of this simple problem. All I hear from Apache nerds is how amazing it is but it can't even make a url appear to be one directory higher.

 

ha ha, ok, whatever.
Well, you asked the original question & I gave you a 1 line answer that was exactly correct.
but it turns out theres a whole bunch of other stuff you didnt tell us about.

Why dont you just post the original rules from your website, otherwise we are just guessing how your site works.

or better, learn about re-write rules & make your own.

 

Wow, I wasn't getting smart or anything so calm down. I said in the original post:

Actual article location:
example.com/folder/article.php

Goal - article appears in URL as:
example.com/article.php

It doesn't get more simple than that.

 

RewriteRule ^article.php$ folder/article.php

That is the answer to the above.

However, what you are not explaining - is "folder" always the same? or does it vary?
is article.php always the same?
If they change, how are they changing? what is the pattern?

Without any actual world real examples we can only answer based on what you give.

 

I thought it was obvious that "folder" and "article" where examples. That's why I further explained that the folder is called "sunday" and the article names differ, there is no pattern. But that wouldn't matter because I want EVERY file in "sunday" to appear as if it's in the root.

This:
example.com/sunday/some-dumb-article-from-last-year.php

Looks like:
example.com/some-dumb-article-from-last-year.php

Also, this:
example.com/sunday/1002934629081487.php

Looks like:
example.com/1002934629081487.php

 

ok.
We also need to know the actual file name of the script that displays your article & the parameters it takes.

example.com/sunday/some-dumb-article-from-last-year.php

Is this a genuine file?
So if you FTP to your website you can see the folder "sunday" & "some-dumb-article-from-last-year.php" inside?
Because it looks like this is already having some re-write rule on it.
in which case the actual script reference would be
article.php?day=sunday&post=some-dumb-article-from-last-year

 

If its just for the days of the week that you want, then this should work.

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+).php$ monday/$1.php
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+).php$ tuesday/$1.php

& repeat the line for each day of the week or other folder names.

 

Yes, there is an actual folder and file named those things. I haven't done any Apache stuff except the automatically generated redirect (non www to www) from cPanel. I tried RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+).php$ monday/$1.php and it 404s my index but the other pages aren't affected at all (still doesn't change the url). Your last post is what I've been expecting to do, one line of code for each folder, but I don't know much at all about Apache so it's hard for me to tweak anything.

 

right, yep, my mistake there.
I realise the problem now.

Firstly, I think you are maybe mis-understanding something about how this works.
So please just check this statement below & make sure you understand how re-write works.

=====
Re-write doesnt change a url, it allows a new url to map to somewhere else.
So its no good typing "example.com/monday/another-article.php" in the browser & expecting it to change.
After creating the rule, you now use "example.com/another-article.php"
This applies to links on your website too.
=====

You want :
example.com/sunday/some-dumb-article-from-last-year.php > example.com/some-dumb-article-from-last-year.php
example.com/monday/another-article.php > example.com/another-article.php

but do you see the problem? There is no information in the NEW url to tell which folder to use.
You have to have something to indicate which folder you want to use.
Apache cant just guess if "another-article.php" is in monday or tuesday.

The previous rule will work
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+).php$ monday/$1.php
If you use just this rule & then type the url in the browser example.com/article.php (where article.php is a file name inside your monday folder) it will work. But, it will also apply to index.php, as you noted. So its not really what you want.

So, the only way to get this to work, is for you to decide on some way to indicate which folder the file belongs to.
example.com/monday_another-article.php
example.com/m_another-article.php

 

I think I see your point. The end result would still have been that the URL in the users address bar included the actual location. Other forums understood what I wanted but none of their attempts worked either. Thanks for your help. One more thing, would there be any way to make an htaccess file in the folder "monday" so that it wouldn't affect my root "index.php"? I don't know the semantics of Apache codes so let me explain it with my own code. If * equals any file and ../ works like in Dreamweaver (going back one directory) then:

ChangeThis /*
ChangeTo ../*

If something like that were in the monday folders' htaccess file could it work? I just don't know how sites with a ton of articles can have site.com/article130147.php without clogging their root folder in cPanel or their ftp client.

 

I dont think you can do that.
What you are asking for, in effect, is when someone clicks a link (or types it) like this
example.com/monday/another-article.php
Then it physically changes the url in the address bar to example.com/another-article.php.

Its not a good idea because if someone bookmarks "example.com/another-article.php" it doesnt exist because its actually in monday.
& as we discussed, we cant do the opposite ("example.com/another-article.php" maps to monday/another-article.php) because you are missing any info about what folder to look inside.

Other sites have "site.com/article130147.php" because the content is in a database.
For example, they have a page "article.php" - just that 1 page.
All the articles are in the database.
the link "article.php?id=130147" gets the article with that id number from the database & inserts it on the page.
Then they use mod_rewrite to allow the url "article130147.php" > "article.php?id=130147"