Nginx seamless redirect, subdomain + subfolder

Hey,

I’ve been trying lately to do two things on my server:

• Redirect the url
• Rewrite the url

The server is running on nginx.

My domain (sub.domain.com) is set to get html files at the following root: /usr/share/nginx/html. The redirect works fine with this added to the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file:

server {
    ...
    location = / {
        return 301 /folderone/foldertwo/;
    }
    ...
}

My problem comes when this happens. It logically redirects the user via a url redirect. So the browser is no longer showing sub.domain.com but sub.domain.com/folderone/foldertwo/, which makes perfect sense. Now what i’m trying to do is rewrite this url and remove those two folders from it to be back at sub.domain.com from a visual point of view.

I’ve tried several things, among:

• Setting the root of the server directive at /usr/share/nginx/html/folderone/foldertwo
• Adding rewrite ^/folderone/foldertwo/(.*) /$1; in the same location block as the return
• Adding rewrite into another location block like so:

location = /folderone/foldertwo/ { rewrite... }

• Adding a location block with a condition:

location / { 
if ($http_host ~ "^sub.domain.com"){ 
    rewrite ^(.*)$ http://sub.domain.com/folderone/foldertwo/$1 redirect; 
} 
}

• Adding a specific location rewrite (which breaks it all):

location /issue {
rewrite ^/issue(.*) http://$server_name/shop/issues/custom_issue_name$1 permanent;
}

I’m wondering if this can be achieved since i’m trying to redirect to a specific folder and then almost “redirect” to the root.

If possible, should the rules be in the same server directive? Same location block? Is an alias the solution?

Thanks.