Question

Is it possible to make a folder transparent in the URL like in the following example:
example.com/test/
changed to
example.com/

using mod_rewrite?

I like having folders for organization, but I want a nice clean url.

Answer 1

You can achieve that with mod_rewrite putting something like this in the .htaccess file of your root folder:

RewriteEngine on

# the first condition is for avoiding an infinite loop
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/test/.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)$  /test/$1

This will redirect to /test/ all the pages/files requested from /.

If you only want to redirect some files use more specific rule(s):

RewriteEngine on

# the condition is for avoiding an infinite loop
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/test/.*
# redirecting only images files and files that start with "doc"
RewriteRule ^(.*\.(jpg|png|gif))$  test/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^(doc.*)$  test/$1 [L]

Or if you want to use different folders:

RewriteEngine on

# the condition is for avoiding an infinite loop
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/images/.*
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/docs/.*
# redirecting only images files and files that start with "doc"
RewriteRule ^(.*\.(jpg|png|gif))$  images/$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^(doc.*)$  docs/$1 [L]