Question

I would like to redirect a user to a special directory with a landing page
but only in case the users type the domain name or the domain name followed by a slash and NOTHING else.

how would I state such condition in htaccess?

the reason for this is that I have a web application on the same domain and the urls have to be available for it to function properly. I want users to be redirected on the landing page only in case they come to the domain name.

Answer 1

You can use code like this in your .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?mydomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^$ /special-dir [R=301,L]

This will do external redirection in the sense that the URL in browser will also change to http://www.mydomain.com/special-dir