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Ashton Heald
Ashton Heald

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How to add Dropbox to XAMPP using an Alias

How to Access an outside folder in Localhost

By default, localhost uses the htdocs folder, but we want it to use a specified folder inside of our dropbox called www.

We will achieve this by using an alias.

First, open httpd.conf; you can find this in \xampp\apache\conf or in the XAMPP Control Panel located in the Apache row, click Config then Apache (httpd.conf).

Now, locate the <Directory> tag that should looks something like this;

DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs"
<Directory "C:/xampp/htdocs">
    # important content
</Directory>
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You will want to copy the entire Directory tag and paste it below, then change the path to your specified folder like so

DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs"
<Directory "C:/xampp/htdocs">
    # important content
</Directory>

<Directory "C:/your_path/">
    # important content
</Directory>
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Eg. <Directory "C:/Users/ash/Dropbox/www">

Now, let's scroll down and find <IfModule alias_module> then locate and copy Alias /webpath /full/filesystem/path, then locate ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "C:/xampp/cgi-bin/" and paste below like so

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "C:/localservers/xampp/cgi-bin/"
Alias /webpath /full/filesystem/path
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Now change the Alias to /your_folder /your_path
Eg. Alias "/www" "C:/Users/ash/Dropbox/www".

Save and close, then restart Apache.
Now you can access, localhost/your_folder
Eg. localhost/www

But Wait! What if you wanna access your folder with just localhost

How to change the default location using PHP

Inside of htdocs let's create an index.php or if one already exist, replace or edit it.

Then add the following snippet and change /your_folder/ to your specified folder.

<?php
    if (!empty($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && ('on' == $_SERVER['HTTPS'])) {
        $uri = 'https://';
    } else {
        $uri = 'http://';
    }
    $uri .= $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
    header('Location: '.$uri.'/your_folder/');
    exit;
?>
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Eg. header('Location: '.$uri.'/www/');

Save and close, then restart Apache.
Now go to localhost and it should automatically redirect to localhost/your_folder

and you're all set!

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