tar - Remove leading directory components on extraction

Solution 1:

You want to use the --strip-components=NUMBER option of tar:

 --strip-components=NUMBER
       strip NUMBER leading components from file names on extraction

Your command would be:

tar xfz /var/www/site.gz --strip-components=2 -C /tmp

Solution 2:

Why not use -C option when creating:

$ tar cf /var/www/site.tar -C /var/www_bak/ site