Question

Is there a way to keep the webroot folder at the actual root?

To explain: what should I do to achieve a folder structure like this:

app/
cake/
css/
files/
img/
js/
plugins/
vendors/

With everything working as it should.

Answer 1

You are doing mistake of exposing your code to public.

/project/
/project/app/ 
...
/project/css/
/project/js/
...

However if you still want to set /project/ as your webroot, place this into .htaccess file

// /project/.htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ app/webroot/index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>

Recommendation: You should stick to the default directory structure of CakePHP, because it’s proven secure and best practice to do most kind of applications.