Wordpress - Show my blog along with main site - php

Question

I already have my main PHP based website running in the root folder of my website. Lets call it www.example.com. I have about few pages. Some of the navigation links are:
Home | Services | About Us | Contact Us
I wanted to add a Wordpress blog to this.. So heres what I did.
Home | Blog | Services | About Us | Contact Us
Please note that I have now created a sub-folder called "blog" in the root folder of the website and I have uploaded all the Wordpress "files" into the blog folder. So if I want to access my blog, as of now, I would visit: www.example.com/blog
So far, its ok. Now when I add new posts to the blog, I do NOT want people to see the "/blog" in the URL, when they try to read the posts. I went through the following link, but it does not help: Giving WordPress Its Own Directory
The above link will help if people just want to host their Wordpress site and nothing else. Its just helpful to keep the root folder clean and still access the URL from the root folder. But thats not the case with me. I already have PHP based website running in root folder. I just want
the blog to be an addition, yet skip showing that its added in another folder.
I made the following changes as well in admin panel of wordpress:
In "Settings > General" page:
WordPress Address (URL): www.example.com/blog
Site Address (URL): www.example.com
In "Permalink Settings" page, chose this option: http://www.example.com/sample-post/
Now, the home page & other pages load fine.
THE PROBLEM:
When I visit: www.example.com/blog, it says:
"This is somewhat embarrassing, isn’t it?
It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching, or one of the links below, can help."
I do not understand why I see the above when I expect to see the post. There is a sample post of Hello Word. I expected to see a link to that, but that did not happen. Why is this happening?
Further, if I click on the Home link, it gets me to the homepage of the website, which is correct. But if I click on the "Sample Page" menu link or "Hello World" link under "RECENT POSTS", the following URL appears in address bar:
www.example.com/hello-world/
But, it does NOT show me the post. Instead it loads the index.php page of the root folder of my website, which should not happen. It appears as if the CSS file is not loaded as it removed all the CSS. So the index.php page's CSS stripped version appears when I visit: www.example.com/hello-world/
I have tried to find solutions for this, but all of them lead to the "Giving WordPress Its Own Directory" post. And the solution mentioned in that page, does not apply in my case. How can this be solved? All help is appreciated.
Thank you.

Answer 1

Method I
This would be dirty, and I'm not sure if this would even work, but try to do the folowings (I hope your site is procedural and you're not using any framework, otherwise this would complicate things a little):
Put the blog in your document root, so all WP links would work "naturally".
Put your site files into site/ subfolder.
Now we'll do some magic with .htaccess and rewrite your "site" links by putting the following code right after RewriteEngine on:
# do this for all pages of your site:
RewriteRule ^services/?$ /site/services/$1 [L,QSA]
# now let's try to trick WordPress and swap / with /blog
# so users will see /blog in adressbar, but we'll show the WP homepage
RewriteRule ^blog/(.*)?$ /$1 [L,QSA]
Now we should make WP think that /blog is actually /, so it would not make any suspicions. Put the following script in the index.php file of Wordpress, before any other code:
if( $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] == '/' ){ // original site homepage requested
include('./site/index.php');
exit;
}
if( trim($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/') == 'blog' ){
$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] = '/';
$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'] = '';
}
I haven't tested anything, but you should play around with these.
Method II
I'm not an advanced WP user, but if playing around with permalinks suggestion from #bingjie2680's answer would change the urls, than you can then try only one more thing in addition to that answer. Add something similar to the following lines to .htaccess that's in your document root (not WP's one):
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(services|about|or_other_stuff)/?$
# Rewrite the request to call the WP index.php.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /blog/index.php/$1 [L,QSA]
Maybe there are other methods, maybe the true solution would mix both of this.
Keep trying.

Answer 2

I don't think there would be a problem if you do the following things:
no need to change anything in your original site.
create a folder called blog in your root directory and place all wordpress files in here.
follow the quick five-step to set up your blog
your wordpress url and site url should both be yourdomain.com/blog
In "Permalink Settings" page, chose this option: www.example.com/sample-post/
keep your menu like: Home | Blog | Services | About Us | Contact Us
with 'blog' pointing to yourdomian.com/blog
Now if your click on the blog menu, your site url will be yourdomian.com/blog, but if you click on one of posts say 'hello world', then your url will be yourdomian.com/hello-world.