How to remove unnecessary parts from the URL / shorten URL / make URL friendlier

Issue

• We would like to remove the web/guest part of the URL, to shorten it
  e.g. http://www.example.com/web/guest/home-> http://www.example.com/home 

Environment

• Liferay Portal 6.2
• Liferay DXP 7.0-7.4

Resolution

The default public Site base URL is https://localhost:8080/web/<site-friendly-url>, and the private one is https://localhost:8080/group/<site-friendly-url>

To remove these parts from the URL, you have to specify your domain as a virtual host of your site:

1. You have to go to
   • DXP 7.0-7.3: Admin Menu > Configuration > Site Settings section > drop-down the "Site URL" portion of the configuration page
   • DXP 7.4: Admin Menu > Configuration > Site Settings section > Site Configuration > click on "Site URL" in the left side
2. You have to specify virtual hosts for the public and private pages.
   • e.g. add www.example.com to public pages
3. Now the Home page opens as http://www.example.com/home 

Note: If you want to test this on your local computer, you will have to modify the /etc/hosts file to include the custom domain (www.example.com) to point to 127.0.0.1