How to remove the subdirectory name from your WordPress website address

In this example of subdirectory redirection, we’ll be using .htaccess to properly redirect a website address such that both the website and WordPress dashboard load without the subdirectory name.

Our domain for this example will be “your-domain-name.com”

Within the public directory, often named public_html or html, you should see the following settings for a standard WordPress permalinks setup:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

The above works perfectly fine when your main domain name is located at the top of your public directory–not so well if your site is located in a subdirectory like “blog”

 

To enable your website to function properly within your blog subdirectory, but without showing the blog subdirectory name, we actually need to change three different files, shown in the picture at right:

The first file we’ll edit is the .htaccess file (contents shown above), to:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?your-domain-name.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /blog/$1
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?your-domain-name.com$
RewriteRule ^(/)?$ /blog/index.php [L] 
</IfModule>

 

The second will be the index.php file, from:

/** Loads the WordPress Environment and Template */
require( dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/wp-blog-header.php' );

to:

/** Loads the WordPress Environment and Template */
require( dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/blog/wp-blog-header.php' );

 

And lastly, open the blog directory, then edit the .htaccess file within to:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

 

Updating these three files, as shown above, will accomplish two goals:

Display your website in the web browser location bar as the domain name only and not show the trailing subdirectory /blog

And allow you to access your WordPress dashboard as simply www.your-domain-name.com/wp-admin/ instead of www.your-domain-name.com/blog/wp-admin/

 

I hope you’ve found this short tutorial on how to set up a WordPress site within a subdirectory without displaying the subdirectory within Google search or the WordPress dashboard helpful.

If you have further questions please feel free to leave your comments or questions below.

Enjoy!