RE: silent URL redirect/cloak with mod_rewrite

["Boyle Owen" <Owen.Boyle@xxxxxxx>]

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From: Hank [mailto:heskin@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 1:43 AM
To: users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: silent URL redirect/cloak with mod_rewrite

Hello All,

 

I've tried about 100 combinations and searched google over and over, but I can't find nor figure out how to do this simple task.

 

I have one webserver with sites at:

 

/home/user/public_html/  ( http://basedomain.com site points here) 

/home/user/public_html/siteA

/home/user/public_html/siteB

 

I have domain names like this:  http://domainA.com and http://domainB.com

 

I want to *silently* redirect http://domainA.com to  /home/user/public_html/siteA

and http://domainB.com to  /home/user/public_html/siteB

 

Now keep in mind the literals "domainA" is not the same as the directory name "siteA", and same for domainA/siteA.

 

I have found several ways to non-silently redirect http://domainA.com to http://basedomain/siteA, but that's not good enough.  It needs to be a silent re-direct.

 

I realize I could do this with virtual domains if I had access to httpd.conf, but I don't on this server.

 

Thanks,

-Hank

If I understand you correctly, you have registered domainA and domainB and the domain names point to your server's IP in DNS. You want to map domainA to ../siteA and domainB to ../siteB. You don't have access to the server's httpd.conf directly and only have access to .htaccess files.

 

Then I don't think this is possible. Here's why:

 

The NameVirtualHost mechanism is specifically designed for this situation, but this has to be used in the main config - it is impossible to do this in .htaccess. The problem is that although the request (for domainA, say) might come in with a header like "Host: domainA", without a NameVirtualHost directive and a corresponding VH, this will be ignored and the request will go the main docroot.

 

BTW, "redirect" has a very specific meaning in HTTP - it means to send a 301 or 302 redirect response that causes the browser to submit a new request to a new URL. It is always non-"silent" - ie, the browser location display shows the new URL. By "silent redirect", I think you mean proxying - where the server gets content from a new URL and returns it to the browser without telling it where it came from. That's a different thing and is never referred to as redirection.

Rgds,
Owen Boyle
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