Question

I have a domain called example.com that takes a parameter ?ref=XXXXXX.

The referral URLs are ex.co/XXXXXX

My question is, when a user goes to ex.co/AhJ7z1 or any random string, how do I configure my server to forward to example.com/?ref=AhJ7z1.

Is that something that can be done in .htaccess or php.ini or something like PHP?

EDIT :

I’d like this to be done in a PHP script if possible so that I can reserve certain URLs and restrict URLs outside of what I want.

Is there an .htaccess script I could utilize index.php in root directory to do this?

Answer 1

In your .htaccess you can do something like this:

RewriteEngine on    
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^ex\.co$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/?ref=$1 [L,R]

EDIT: to redirect to index.php

RewriteEngine on    
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^ex\.co$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?ref=$1 [L]

Then it’s a matter of you writing your index.php script to grab the ‘ref’ parameter and find what URL to redirect to.