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mod_userdir seems to be able customize where the home folders are, but is there a way to make those available under a custom URL?

I want to provide users with a url like the following: http://example.com/arbitrarystring/[user]

loopbackbee
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  • I suspect you need to look at `mod_rewrite`. – Zoredache Dec 14 '12 at 00:52
  • @Zoredache I was hoping to avoid it, but I will if there's no other choice. Thanks for the tip anyway – loopbackbee Dec 14 '12 at 00:55
  • any particular reason to why you would rather avoid `mod_rewrite`? – Mathias R. Jessen Dec 21 '12 at 23:43
  • @MathiasR.Jessen Since `mod_rewrite` is such a complex module, I assume (perhaps mistakenly) that it'll be so much easier to come up with an insecure configuration. Also, I imagine there's some performance hit, though that's not particularly relevant in my usecase. `mod_userdir` just seems tailor-made for this purpose, and I keep wondering why it's still there (in apache) if `mod_rewrite` is capable of emulating it (which I know it does). I'll readily accept a mod_rewrite answer here, if there's really no other choice – loopbackbee Dec 21 '12 at 23:49

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This is entirely doable. I did just that and recorded the efforts here. This is a solution that does use mod-rewrite, but not deep wizardry. The problem we had was that when we were implementing user_dirs, The Powers That Be thought using a shift key to get at a directory was too much work and wanted a tilde-free version. That's a one character version of what you're doing.

The meat is in the RewriteRule statements. 

RewriteRule  ^/somestring/([a-z0-9]+)         /~$1    [R]

The problem here is that /~username will still work. You can possibly get around that by using an internal proxy-redirect to another hidden domain name.

RewriteRule ^/somestring/(a-z0-9]+)        http://othervhost.example.com/~$1      [PT]
sysadmin1138
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  • Since no one came up with an answer using just `mod_userdir`, and your solution is well documented, I'm awarding you the bounty. Thanks for sharing! – loopbackbee Dec 28 '12 at 06:19