How do I set Magento up such that the storecode comes before the path to store in the URL? (Pre-path store code)

Question

So; I'm currently setting up a Magento installation off the back of a WordPress multisite setup. The WP multisite has 2 sites/domains, and each site has 3 regional variants powered by mqTranslate; ala:

company1.tld/uk, company1.tld/us, company1.tld/eu company2.tld/uk, company2.tld/us, company2.tld/eu

I have got Magento installed, and out of the box with Multistore I've got it to do:

company1.tld/shop/uk etc.

But for consistency and so the site is seen 'as one' by search engines I would prefer for the URL to be formatted as:

company1.tld/uk/shop etc.

Would appreciate any advice on how best to achieve this.

Edited to add: I have attempted changing the base URL in the store, and coupled this with the following HTACCESS in the root:

  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /

  RewriteRule ^([a-z]{2,3})/shop/(.*)/?$ /shop/index.php [QSA,L]
  RewriteRule ^([a-z]{2,3})/shop/?$      /shop/index.php [QSA,L]

When I then navigate to company1.tld/uk/shop, I get a Magento 404 error...

Answer 1

You are attempting to have Magento run in a subdirectory of web root where the base URL doesn't match this install location. Without a minor modification you do get a 404 error when you do this.

Requests are reaching Magento ok so it sounds like your rewrite from web root to the subdirectory is correct but you still need to deal with the 404.

To cut a long story short, because of the difference between install location and base URL an invalid request path is created which results in a 404 as Magento cannot process the request. It's pretty easy to fix, you just need to redefine $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] at the top of index.php in your Magento install so that it matches the base URL. So in your case it sounds like it's probably currently /shop/index.php so you need to change it to /uk/shop/index.php. At the top of index.php add:

$_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] = '/uk/shop/index.php';

and the store should spring to life.

For a bit more info look at this blog post I wrote a while back.