WP in subfolder hidden by htaccess, but media links show the subfolder

Question

The WordPress install is in /public_html/example. In the .htaccess file in public_html I have this code:

# 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>
# END WordPress

In /public_html/example I have exactly the same file.

So when I access the site, all the pages have URLs such as http://example.com/about. The URL rewriting specified in .htaccess is working. But the rewriting does not work for media files, which all have links like http://example.com/example/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/hello.txt.

My question: Is it possible to get file links such as http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/hello.txt (without the duplication of "example")?

Answer 1

One option is to explicitly move the wp-content folder one level up so it resides at /public_html/wp-content by defining WP_CONTENT_DIR in wp-config.php.

For this I'd recommend something more like the second method described in Giving WordPress Its Own Directory. Editing wp-config.php has an example for the WP_CONTENT_DIR change.

The resulting directory structure (relative to public_html would look like this:

- .htaccess
- index.php
- wp-content
  - ...
- example
  - wp-admin
  - wp-includes
  - ...

Bonus:

You can use a .htaccess file similar to this one:

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

# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
RewriteRule ^wp-admin$ wp-admin/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) example/$1 [L] # your WP folder
RewriteRule ^(.*\.php)$ wp/$1 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

This way you can set both Home URL and Site URL to https://example.com (without /example, so it won't be clear at first glance that WordPress is installed in a subfolder. You can then log in via https://example.com/wp-admin/

Such a setup is especially useful when using Composer, where WordPress is best installed in a subdirectory like described in Rarst's Composer in WordPress guide.