.htaccess rewrite WordPress Multisite

Question

On my server I've got a single WordPress installation for my own company website. Besides that, I would like to create a demo area for clients.

At the moment I've got the following setup and folders:

www.domain.com - Single WordPress installation for company website

www.domain.com/demo/ - WordPress Multisite

At the moment all the clients websites have the following domain structure: www.domain.com/demo/client1, www.domain.com/demo/client2, etc.

Instead of those long urls, I would like a subdomain: demo.domain.com/client1, demo.domain.com/client2, etc.

WordPress Multisite standard generates the following .htaccess:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /demo/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$2 [L]

RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ $1wp-admin/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule  ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $1 [L]
RewriteRule  ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(.*\.php)$ $1 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

From other topics at stackoverflow I've found the following:

RewriteRule ^demo/(.*) demo.domain.com/$2/

But unfortunately this doesn't work. Anybody who can help me? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Keep the multisite .htaccess where it is and put this in the .htaccess in the root of your web directory:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^demo
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/demo/$1