Redirect/Rewrite Subdomain to Subfolder

Question

I'm trying to redirect a subdomain to a subfolder e.g. forums.domain.com to www.domain.com/forums

Note that I started the forums in the subfolder format but worried that members might mistakenly try to access the forums using the subdomain format.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?forums\.domain\.com
RewriteRule .* /forums [L]

From what I read the codes above should work through .htaccess, but do I still need to create a DNS A record to point to the IP address of the server?

Solution

Try this:

Options +FollowSymLinks 
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www)\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)\.domain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/%1 [R=301,L]

This is generic and will redirect all subdomains to a subdirectory. If you have only one subdomain you want to redirect you can hardcode it in.

Comments

[Admin]

I manage to get the redirection working by adding a DNS A record but now the url becomes forums.domain.com. How can I change my htaccess so that it retains the url as www.domain.com/forums?

[ssaaddii]

@John: I've been searching for months on how to do this successfully. So far your snippet of code is the only one that has worked on my WP subfolder multisite install. I think it might have something to do with the "+FollowSymLinks" line. What I wanted to do was take xyz.domain.com and redirect to domain.com/**xyz**. That works with the above code. But I'd like abc.domain.com to redirect to domain.com/**xyz** as well (i.e., two subdomains pointing to the same subfolder). How exactly do I do that? Despite my layman's attempts to "reverse engineer" or adapt your code, I don't understand

[Natetronn]

I also have tried multiple versions of what you have, from other sources though, with no luck. Yours was the only which did in fact work for me (at least on MAMP.) The only difference that I can see is that you are using %1 vs $1. John, would you mind explaining a little bit about that? Thanks!

[Vins]

@John This works perfectly. How to keep the subdomain active instead of the folder in the url? Thanks