Alias (Apache: The Definitive Guide)

8.3. Alias

Alias url_path directory_or_filename
Server config, virtual host

The Alias directive allows documents to be stored somewhere in the filesystem other than under the DocumentRoot. We can demonstrate this simply by creating a new directory, /usr/www/somewhere_else, and putting in it a file lost.txt, which has this message in it:

I am somewhere else

Now edit httpd.conf so that it looks like this:

...
TransferLog /usr/www/site.alias/logs/customers/access_log
Alias /somewhere_else /usr/www/somewhere_else
<VirtualHost butterthlies_sales
...

Run go and, from the browser, access http://www.butterthlies.com/somewhere_else/.

We see:

Index of /somewhere_else
. Parent Directory
. lost.txt

If we click on Parent Directory, we arrive at the DocumentRoot for this server, /usr/www/site.alias/htdocs/customers, not, as might be expected, at /usr/www. This is because Parent Directory really means "parent URL," which is http://www. butterthlies.com/ in this case.

What sometimes puzzles people (even those who know about it but have temporarily forgotten) is that if you go to http://www.butterthlies.com/, and there's no ready-made index, you don't see somewhere_else listed.

Note that you do not want to write:

Alias /somewhere_else/ /usr/www/somewhere_else

(with a trailing "/" after the first somewhere_else) since this can produce baffling Not Found errors for the client.