Running WordPress and Drupal side-by-side

I’ve had a case where I need to run WordPress and Drupal side-by-side.

My preferred method is to run WordPress in a sub-directory of the Drupal installation.

So the server’s document root is set to: /var/www/html/oeit/. The Drupal instance is in: /var/www/html/oeit/drupal/. And the WordPress install is in /var/www/html/oeit/haiti-oer-symposium/.

Aside: We already have a rewrite rule in place because our Drupal installation was coded to require the subdirectory <server document root>/drupal. Yes, that’s not ideal. But the rewrite rule has been a heck of a lot easier than going through and changing the custom theme and testing it out. I’m not a Drupal developer, nor do I see a particular need to become one right now.

With the rewrite rule, I needed to be able to let the WordPress rewrite rules take precedence in the /var/www/html/oeit/haiti-oer-symposium/ directory. That actually gives part of a clue as to how the problem is solved.

I originally looked for stuff like “integrate wordpress and drupal” or “run wordpress in subdirectory of drupal”. Ultimately I ran across the suggestion to have Apache ignore anything going to the haiti-oer-symposium sub-directory.

I added the following code to our .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/haiti-oer-symposium/


Here’s an explanation from rick_deckard about how this is doing it’s thing…

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^blog

…

In that case it says
If the request URI does NOT (!) BEGIN (^) with “blog” and the requested URI does not map to a file or directory, then rewrite to invoke drupal.

Put another way
If the request URI is for my blog or a file or a directory, serve that straight up, without handing me off to drupal. So in the case of your blog, it passes you through to WP

…

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][And this proved to be key…]

As for the leading slash – run the HTTP Live Headers plugin in Firefox to see what the server thinks your actual REQUEST_URI is (or use phpinfo() on your /blog directory). In my case at least, it does not want the leading slash.

[Our server did require the leading and trailing slashes.]

Source: rick_deckard

So, is it better to know what you’re doing, or just get lucky with copy and paste?[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]