How to deploy yii2 with a web root other than /web

Question

I am working on a yii2 project, and would like to deploy it to an apache server where the entire website is expected to exist in the /public_html directory, and /public_html is the web root for that host. The issue is that yii2 expects the web root to be /web, and it expects most of the site hierarchy to exist outside of the /web directory.

I would prefer not to have to change the webroot to /public_html/web, and for future projects, it may not be an option. So, is there a way to place the entire site hierarchy in /public_html , and still have the site work correctly?

I have tried creating a /public_html/.htaccess file with the following contents:

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !web/
    RewriteRule (.*) /web/$1 [L]

And this seemed to work correctly, at first. Nothing outside of /public_html/web was accessible, and files within subdirectories of /web, such as /web/js/signup.js which could be accessed via the url http://localhost/js/signup.js, but this caused my routing rules (which were set up on a local system where I could have the web root pointing at /web) to no longer be recognized.

So, I would be happy with either an alternate to the .htaccess route, or a suggestion to how to fix the routing rules so that the .htaccess route would work.

Edit for Clarification

I have a hosting provider where the web root is ~/public_html . Yii has documentation explaining that you can rename www to public_html, and have everything that would normally be outside of /www located in ~, along with the various dotfiles and user-documents that Linux normally places in ~. I would prefer to have all site-related directories together (under the webroot).

As an alternative, a two-directory structure, such as the following would work:

~/
 |--- (Various dotfiles and subdirectories unrelated to the web site)
 |--- yii - Contains all subfolders that should be outside of the web root
      |--- commands
      |--- config
      |--- controllers 
      |--- (etc...)
 |--- public_html - Contains everything that can be within the web root.
      |--- (etc...)

Answer 1

This has been asked so many times that they made a page for it in the Yii2 docs.

I personally answered this too many times to remember.