I think this has to deal with DNS actually. If the client has cPanel, simply create a subdomain of 'www' and point the created directory to the world-viewable web folder.
...if you have direct access to the server, you can make the 'www' directory first as a link rather than an actual directory-file...I'm not too sure how to do the auto-forwarding of a directory to another using FTP/cPanel. I think you could probably redirect using a .htaccess file though...

BACK TO SQUARE ONE!
BTW, did those REGEX's work?