Knowledge Base

Get Expert Website Hosting

Choose website reliability and expertise with SiteGround!

Home / Website Help / Other / How to change my document root folder using an .htaccess file?

How to change my document root folder using an .htaccess file?

Last update: Aug 24, 2023 1 min read

By default, your main website is loaded from the public_html folder of your account. The public_html directory is also called web root folder or document root folder. If you would like to keep your site’s files in a subfolder of the public_html, and do not want the subfolder to appear as a part of the URL to your website, you can mask the subfolder from the URL by placing the following directives in the .htaccess file inside the public_html folder:

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

In the above lines you should replace the following:

domain-name.com – Type your own domain name
folder – Type the name of the subfolder which has the test/development website

If there is no .htaccess file in the public_html folder you can create one using Site Tools > Site >File Manager. Then, type your domain name in a browser and you should see the website which is in your subfolder.

Share this article