Drupal custom URL rewriting - Change the admin url to enhance security
The following tip can be used in multiple scenarios (being anywhere you need custom URL rewriting and want to do this without .htaccess), but I'll illustrate it for two specific purposes.
- At our company all urls beginning with
/admin are blocked from outside by a firewall for content security reasons. This sucks, because Drupal administration is done on pages with a/admin url. So we need to find a way to rewrite all of the urls to something like/config (or something else). - If someone knows your site is on Drupal, this gives him some knowledge on how the site is structured. For example does he know that all administration is done on
/admin . To make it harder to guess this url, we want to rename it.
Both of these cases can be tackled by one hook (custom_url_rewrite) in Drupal that has to be specified in the settings.php file. You can find a descent explanation of how this hook works in the Drupal API.
In the following example I rewrite all admin urls to config (and vice versa).
function custom_url_rewrite($op, $result, $path) {
if ($op == 'alias') {
if (preg_match('|^admin(/{0,1}.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
return 'config'. $matches[1];
}
}
if ($op == 'source') {
if (preg_match('|^config(/{0,1}.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
return 'admin'. $matches[1];
}
}
return $result;
}
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Comments
Yup.
Doing this to redirect to subdomains myself.
Echoing the previous comments, this is by far the best quickstart I’ve been able to find for changing the admin url to enhance security in Drupal. Thank you very much.
my drupal version is 6,i want to koow how to make this in drupal 6?
thank you!
Great tip! With the amount of hackers out there, adding this new level of security will really keep them out.
Thanxxxxx a lot :)
Examples for Drupal 6 using
custom_url_rewrite_outboundandcustom_url_rewrite_inboundfunction custom_url_rewrite_outbound(&$path, &$options, $original_path) {
global $user;
if (preg_match('|^admin(/.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
$path = 'administration'. $matches[1];
}
if ($path == 'admin') {
$path = 'administration';
}
if (preg_match('|^user(/.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
$path = 'usr'. $matches[1];
}
if ($path == 'user') {
$path = 'usr';
}
}
function custom_url_rewrite_inbound(&$result, $path, $path_language) {
global $user;
if (preg_match('|^administration(/.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
$result = 'admin'. $matches[1];
}
if ($path == 'administration') {
$result = 'admin';
}
if (preg_match('|^usr(/.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
$result = 'user'. $matches[1];
}
if ($path == 'usr') {
$result = 'user';
}
}
for drupal 6 use these as examplse for your sites/****/settings.php
note that it also redirects admin to 404 if you don't want anyone to access admin anymore
function custom_url_rewrite_outbound(&$path, &$options, $original_path) {
if (preg_match('|^admin(/{0,1}.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
$path = 'config'. $matches[1];
}
}
function custom_url_rewrite_inbound(&$result, $path, $path_language) {
if (preg_match('|^config(/{0,1}.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
$result = 'admin'. $matches[1];
}
if (preg_match('|^admin(/{0,1}.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
$result = '404'. $matches[1];
}
}
Your max-allowed_packet=32M on your other page saved my from some hairpulling and this article rocks too. Thanks x20.
Fantastic post. Bookmarked this site and emailed it to a few friends, your post was that great, keep it up.
How would you go about doing the same URL rewrite using the new fucntions in D6?
ie. custom_url_rewrite_inbound and custom_url_rewrite_outbound
There's no setting. You need to get your hands dirty and write a bit of code.
Any particular setting we have to put inside the drupal for changing the admin url.I want to change the admin url to some custom url.
This code should work. It's for Drupal 5 though.
Sorry.I am new in drupal.What I want is changing of admin url to some thing else but your code only create alias and It will not change the actual path i.e. http://example.com/?q=admin
How I can change the url of admin in drupal.
Sorry Joe, this has to be settings.php. Changed it in my text. Thx!
Where is this file located in drupal 5?
I used to do those kind of renames to my websites.Is not a big issue someone knows your admin location..but every every thing you hide will increase security/
I'll try and change it in into my websites
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