Treating a subdirectory as a root directory for Apache - html

Question

I cannot find a way to do what I want. I want to upload a project to my server at http://example.com/MyNewProject
In each of the web pages I include a file which does all of the imports for stylesheets, JavaScript etc. I don't want to provide the full path every time I just want to be able to do /MyStylesheet.css
My main websites document root is /var/www/html/example and my new projects directory is stored within /var/www/html/example/MyNewProject.
What I want is in my import when I do /MyStylesheet.css instead of going to my servers main web directory it will go to /var/www/html/example/MyNewProject in order to get the CSS.
I've tried adding the following to my Apache config file:
Alias /NewProjectTemplate "/var/www/html/example/NewProjectTemplate"
Alias /NewPRojectTemplate/ "/var/www/html/example/NewProjectTemplate"
<Directory "/var/www/html/example/NewProjectTemplate">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes
AllowOverride All
XBitHack On
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
This unfortunately hasn't worked so I've also tried adding the following to my virtualhosts file
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example/NewProjectTemplate
ServerName example.com/NewProjectTemplate
</VirtualHost>
I've looked around on Google but cannot find anything specific, the only thing I've found is something to do with using the Rewrite engine but this seems a little too complicated and OTT for my needs.
Update
I've got a little further, although not a lot, I'm sure its not supposed to be this complicated.
Instead of using the virtual hosts, I'm now using an alias and below is what I've added to my httpd.conf file
DocumentRoot "/var/www/html"
Alias /NewTemp/ "/var/www/html/example/NewProjectTemplate/"
Alias /NewTemp "/var/www/html/example/NewProjectTemplate"
<Directory "/var/www/html/example/NewProjectTemplate/">
Options FollowSymLinks Includes
AllowOverride all
</Directory>
<Directory "/var/www/html/example/NewProjectTemplate">
Options FollowSymLinks Includes
AllowOverride all
</Directory>
In my HTML code in my SSI I am doing the following:
<!--#include file="includes/imports.html"-->
As you can see this is a relative path and Includes is inside the root of NewProjectTemplate. However, this is a template file so I want it to always to go to the root to find the file so it is guaranteed to work no matter how deep into the site it. For example if I change the line to the below I then get an error error processing directive
<!--#include file="/includes/imports.html"-->
So even though it works without the / but doesn't with the slash, if I don't include the slash so this import then works, the imports within the imports.html file work even though they do contain the leading slash so it always go to the root. Below is my HTML imports file
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/StyleSheet.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/navigation/top-nav.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/navigation/side-nav.css">
<script type="text/javascript" src="/scripts/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/scripts/menu.js"></script>
So just to clarify, if the #include file = includes/imports.html the SSI directive works and /StyleSheet.css is successfully imported even though it has the leading slash. If I add a / to the path of the SSI it then doesn't get imported.
But here is where it gets weirder.
If I then add another file to a subdirectory e.g. NewProjectTemplate/MySubDirectory and then add the SSI to be ../includes/imports.html it still doesn't work. Its like the #include file SSI directive expects the file to be in the same working directory.

Answer 1

So, have you tried like this in the virtual host?
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin emailaddress#domain.com
DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/example/"
ServerName example.local
ServerAlias example.local
<Directory "/var/www/html/example/">
Options All Includes Indexes FollowSymLinks
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
Alias /NewProjectTemplate /var/www/html/example/NewProjectTemplate
<Directory "/var/www/html/example/NewProjectTemplate">
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Hope it helps this time..

Answer 2

Just accidentally stumbled across this very old threat.
No need of host or alias if you just want a sub dir to be treated as root.
The way to do it is to amend the httpd.conf, there you will find
<Directory>
just update this line and add
<Directory "your/server/root/original_path/subpath">
# your options
</Directory>