Deploying to a shared hosting non-default folder

By default I don’t like my web content to be on my server default drive. And the main reason is organization. That’s why I put it under a different folder. Ex. main_web/

Setting it on a NGINX server is done inside the *.config file, but on a shared hosting you don’t have access to those config files. Instead, the solution is located under a file called .htaccess.

This file is located under your shared hosting /public_web folder. If you have a cpanel manager you might not be able to find it on the File manager link. To find it, an alternative is to connect to your hosting using an FTP client.

Depending on your service it might look different, but in my case, the default content of this file was:

RewriteEngine on

If this file doesn’t exists, create one, but be sure you are lookin in the right place or you might need to enable a feature in you FTP client to show hidden files.

Add the following lines to that file:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^<DOMAIN_NAME>$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.<DOMAIN_NAME>$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !<WEB_HOME_FOLDER>/
RewriteRule (.*) /<WEB_HOME_FOLDER>/$1 [L]

Replace <DOMAIN_NAME> with your domain name and <WEB_HOME_FOLDER> with the place where you have uploaded you content.

So in my case, with WEB_HOME_FOLDER = main_web and the file end looking like this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^jaconsta.com$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.jaconsta.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !main_web/
RewriteRule (.*) /main_web/$1 [L]

You can have as many subfolders as you need so main_web could also be web/main/content an it should work too!

In my case the changes have reflected in less than 5 minutes, if you don’t, check you are doing it correctly.

Sources:

https://www.siteground.com/kb/how_to_change_my_document_root_folder_using_an_htaccess_file/