Deploying app to shared hosting - .htaccess problem

Put .htaccess inside "public_html/" with below content:

# .htaccess main domain to subdirectory redirect
# Do not change this line.
RewriteEngine on
# Change site.com to be your main domain.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?site.com$
# Change 'subdirectory' to be the directory you will use for your main domain.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/new/public/
# Don't change the following two lines.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# Change 'subdirectory' to be the directory you will use for your main domain.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /new/public/$1
# Change site.com to be your main domain again.
# Change 'subdirectory' to be the directory you will use for your main domain
# followed by / then the main file for your site, index.php, index.html, etc.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?site.com$
RewriteRule ^(/)?$ new/public/index.php [L]

in folder "public_html/new/public" keep default .htaccess of Laravel.

--> Now you can try to connect to "site.com" to see the result :)

@trthanhbk thanks for the reply. But it's not working, it's now giving 500 error on site.com

p.s. if it's relevant - I'm running Apache/2.2.16 (Debian)

@Prez Thanks for your input. you are right, I will need to do this, I'm just now trying to make new site working, while I need to preserve old site to be functioning during I'm testing new one. And the old one is located in public_html

Your url

site.com/newsite/public

then shouldn't the htaccess be

RewriteBase /newsite/
#  not
RewriteBase /new

@jlrdw thanks. no, it's actually new, not newsite. misspelled it here, edited now

Sorry then. But see if anything in these help. https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/laravel/upload-project-laravel?page=1
and https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/laravel/env-file
Read over these, you shouldn't have to mess with htacces except maybe RewriteBase. Good luck.

@jlrdw thanks for your input, I will give this a try

thanks everybody for you replies. after struggling with this a couple more days I've convinced the client to leverage Digital Ocean and now this is just great