You could have instead used RewriteBase /msp.
However, that's not my point.
Many of the .htaccess rules in your site's root will have an effect on the subdirectory. As I told you, .htaccess files cascade. This means that the rules we add in the main site's .htaccess to allow the subdirectory access don't magically make the rest of the .htaccess file disappear; they just tell Apache to not bother applying certain Redirect rules.
Some WordPress plugins require you to make changes in your .htaccess file. It is possible that what they ask you to do won't work exactly because of how Apache works when there are cascading rules. If you bump into one of these and ask me what to do I will tell you to use a subdomain because that's the only thing you can realistically do.
Ideally, Apache should have an option to prevent the cascade from taking place, but this cannot happen because it's a Catch-22. You couldn't read and apply such a directive until you parsed the configuration cascade, but you don't want to parse the configuration cascade until you have applied such a directive. Therefore, there's no way to implement it without incurring massive performance penalties, if at all possible.
As for SEO, that's nonsense. This has stopped being the case since the mid-2000s. There are many myths parroted by self-important SEO "experts", all of which is – pardon my expression – utter bullshit. To begin with, search engines do NOT tell you how they work, and make constant changes, and apply personalised results since the early 2010s. These three conditions alone make it impossible to apply the scientific method: hypothesis, experiment, result analysis. Therefore, what SEO "experts" peddle is voodoo: hearsay, unsubstantiated beliefs, blind guesses. Worse than that, they are so entrenched in their thinking that they will peddle the same bullshit despite evidence to the contrary.
Yes. Evidence to the contrary. I have a personal experience with that.
I had written a massively popular guide on installing Linux on a portable drive a few years ago. For a year and a half it was one of the top results on the subject. I got a massive spike in visitors. NOT on the entire site, though. Just this one page. This page ended up being over 95% of my total traffic on the site. All other pages on my site received no more and no less search engine traffic than they did before. In fact, people coming to the massively popular page didn't even bother looking at any other page. The uplift was just one specific page, it was not for the entire site.
My hypothesis was that search engines work rationally, trying to match users with specific pages based on the content of the page and how many links and visits there are to it. They don't send you to a random page with irrelevant content just because the site "has good SEO".
The recent (April 2024) leaks from Google corroborate that. Their algorithm uses cross-links the content age, and the content itself as the main indicators of whether that page is good. An entire domain may get penalised for egregious content (spam, malware, etc) but the reverse is not true, i.e. an entire domain won't get uplifted just because a few pages are useful.
Make what you want of it.
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
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