htaccess Remove directory from end of URL in apache

Question

Ok, so I know this is a question that has been asked many times, however, I have not been able to find an answer to my particular case, so please do not shoot me down. I have a website: http://gmcomputers.co.za . I am redirecting this URL, using .htaccess file, to a subfolder to load the content:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$
RewriteRule (.*) /gmcomputers/ [L,DPI,R=301]

Which works perefectly, except when I go to http://gmcomputers.co.za I get http://gmcomputers.co.za/gmcomputers/ . So my question is, how do I modify the above code to remove the /gmcomputers/ from being appended? Please note I copied the code above from a website as I am not at all experienced in redirect, etc and am still learning. Also, the reason I am using .htaccess to redirect is due to there being other websites in the root directory and I therefore cannot edit any config files for Apache.
Thanking you.

Answer 1

You contradict yourself in your question. On the one hand you write that you want to redirect and that this "works perfectly", but then you write that you do not want that result.

My guess is that you actually do not want to redirect at all, but that instead you want to internally rewrite your requests to point to that server side folder. While the URL visible in the browser's URL bar does not show that folder. Is that what you are trying to ask?

If so take a look at this example:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/gmcomputers
RewriteRule ^ /gmcomputers%{REQUEST_URI} [END]

You might want to add an actual redirection to direct clients actually using the folder name in their requests:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^/?gmcomputers/(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,END]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/gmcomputers
RewriteRule ^ /gmcomputers%{REQUEST_URI} [END]

Best is to implement such rules in the central http server's host configuration. If you do not have access to that you can instead use a distributed configuration file (typically called ".htaccess") located in the DOCUMENT_ROOT folder configured for the http host, if you enabled the consideration of such files in your host configuration . Though that comes with a number of disadvantages. Above implementation works likewise for both approaches.