Using HAProxy, matching root URL only in ACL
The answer to this was astoundingly simple of course. The ACL needed to regex match ^$|^/$|^/articles|^/blogs
Below is my conf:
global
pidfile /var/run/haproxy.pid
quiet
daemon
defaults
mode http
option httplog
option dontlognull
option http-server-close
retries 1
maxconn 1024
contimeout 15000
clitimeout 60050
srvtimeout 1200000
frontend www
bind :80
acl is_for_server2 path_reg ^$|^/$|^/articles|^/blogs
use_backend server2 if is_for_server2
default_backend server1
backend server1
option forwardfor
server server1 10.0.8.1 maxconn 1500
backend server2
option forwardfor
server server2 10.0.8.2 maxconn 1500