Directories are not in url format? WTF!

[brentb]

So I have partially inherited management of a server running a pretty complex site. I am having a hard time though because the directories do not match up like they normally would....

Normally you have a few directories such as var/www/ etc that lead to your domain xyz.com then the directories in there are like xyz.com/folder1/folder2/index.html

however on this server its like xyz.com/folder1/folder2/folder3/folder4/folder5/folder6...../folder10/index.html

but is accessed through the url as xyz.com/folder1/index.html....

I don't know why people would set it up this way because the folders are all over the place and I can't find anything (there are about 10 directiories inside 10 inside 10 inside 10 etc), or if I move a file that looks like nothing is using it, everything stops working.


Any ideas how to fix this so its more straightforward or how to map it out? I can't even figure how this was done, I thought it would be through .htaccess but I cant find anything in there at all that could be doing it.

Sorry this is so long, its part rant...

 

[j0hnsmith]

sounds like mod_rewrite, rules are usually found in .htaccess but can also be in httpd.conf, apache2.conf, whatever.conf (check to see what config files are including other config files) and virtual host config files, changes will only take effect when apache is restarted.

Just in case you don't know, every directory can have it's own .htaccess file which overrides those found above it, so you might want to do `find . -name .htaccess` to see if there are any .htaccess files you haven't seen yet.

 

[brentb]

Could a bootstrap php file be doing this? I have not had any luck looking for those config files although I found a .htaccess that I think is part of the problem but definitely not the whole thing.