Clean URL - How to edit url variables for editing url name & delete folder name on redirect using htaccess?

Question

Despite there being thousands of questions similar to this I was unable to make it work for this specific situation.

delete folder name on redirect

public_html+
|
|    htaccess
|    robots.txt
|
|    libraries+
|    |   classOne.php
|    |   classTwo.php
|
|    webroot+
|    |   css
|    |   images
|    |   js
|    |   index.php
|    |   article.php

The following seems to always redirect my main domain to webroot/ as I want but how do I go by deleting the webroot folder name from the url so that it looks like

www.example.com/ instead of www.example.com/webroot

I'm using the following code for this..

RewriteBase /webroot/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

---

Mask variables & include folder name instead

I've got an article.php which I'd like to edit the URL to look better for SEO.

In my real domain currently it's showing as below..

www.example.com/webroot/article.php?article_uid=33&article_title=Apple,%20Microsoft%20And%20Free%20Software

I'd like to edit the above to show like this..

www.example.com/article/id/title-goes-here

I have tried with the following code but nothing has changed at all. The only thing I don't know how is to add the slashes to the title.

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^article/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$ webroot/article.php?article_uid=$1&article_title=$2 [QSA,L,NC]

Answer 1

In the htaccess file in your document root, try these rules:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \ /webroot/article\.php\?article_uid=([^&]+)&article_title=([^&\ ]+)
RewriteRule ^ /article/%1/%2/? [L,R=301,NE]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \ /webroot/
RewriteRule ^webroot/(.*)$ /$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^article/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$ /webroot/article.php?article_uid=$1&article_title=$2 [QSA,L,NC]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/webroot/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /webroot/index.php [L]