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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

Without having to specify a domain in the circumstance that multiple domains point to the website root or that a production .htaccess rules can be applied to:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)\.ANYdomain\.com [NC]