Fixing domain display on directory redirects

Question

I have multiple domains directing to multiple directories on my system, as an example...

shopwebsite.co.uk > public_html/useraccounts/shopsite
carwebsite.co.uk > public_html/useraccounts/carsite
foodwebsite.co.uk > public_html/useraccounts/foodsite

This has been okay for a while until I realized that framed forwarding caused the mobile responsiveness to stop responding and so I changed all of the domains to simple redirects. This does work although as you can now work out, whenever somebody types in one of these URLs the website displays as something like:

https://mymainwebsite.co.uk/useraccounts/foodsite

Which is causing a few problems for me in various ways. What I am looking to achieve is to attach each domain to its directory path while keeping the URLs and being able to use the domain properly while also keeping mobile responsiveness.

Now this may seem like a really simple situation although I have a couple different domain hosts and my website hosting is via Hostinger, so I am not able to manipulate certain back end features, making it slightly more difficult for me. I am also still learning and really don't have much knowledge in DNS, IP forwarding, etc so I wouldn't know what I'm looking for?

If somebody can point me in the right direction I can more than likely figure the rest out on my own. I can access my htaccess file for the main website as well as DNS and ability to park domains etc...

Hope somebody can help me find a solution. Thanks.

Answer 1

I think you are looking for something called "Virtual Host". This is a configuration of the web server that allows you to run multiple web sites on the same server. In Apache simple virtual host looks like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/public_html/useraccounts/shopsite"
    ServerName shopwebsite.co.uk

    # Other directives here
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/public_html/useraccounts/carsite"
    ServerName carwebsite.co.uk

    # Other directives here
</VirtualHost>

There are no redirects in this method. The browser is connecting to the webserver and is sending "Host" header - the domain name typed in the URL, then it returns the files from the directory you configured in "DocumentRoot" directive for this "ServerName".

You should call your hosting provider support team and ask them how do you manage virtual hosts.