clean subdirectory elgg installation to run elgg as if installed in root

I am trying to configure a clean installation of elgg to have it run as if it was installed in root but actually have it organized into it's own subdirectory. I like having my directory structure clean in my root and want to have elgg setup as follows:

/public_html/ <--- is the root of my domain mysite.com

/public_html/elgg <--- directory where all core elgg files are located

I want to access mysite.com and have it run elgg without having to use mysite.com/elgg as the url

 

I have already tried the following .htaccess setup:

  • in the root directory I placed a custom .htaccess file with the following
  •    Options +FollowSymLinks
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /

    # This section must come first!
    # Add trailing slash if path does not contain a period or end with a slash
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.|/$)
    RewriteRule (.*) http://mysite.com/elgg-1.7/$1/ [R=301,L]


    #Rewrites http://www.mysite.com/subdir to http://www.mysite.com/
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/elgg-1.7
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ elgg-1.7/$1 [L]
  • I had the additional default .htaccess file created in the elgg directory and did not touch any of the settings

Now when I access mysite.com I am able to get the elgg index page but I try submitting the login form I am running into a "Form is missing __token or __ts fields" error . It seems the redirects in the root .htaccess don't forward the form tokens properly. Is there a work around for this that any developer has figured out.