apache redirect from non www to www

Question

I have a website that doesn't seem to redirect from non-www to www.

My Apache configuration is as follows:

RewriteEngine On
### re-direct to www
RewriteCond %{http_host} !^www.example.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [r=301,nc] 

What am I missing?

Answer 1

Using the rewrite engine is a pretty heavyweight way to solve this problem. Here is a simpler solution:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    Redirect permanent / http://www.example.com/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.example.com
    # real server configuration
</VirtualHost>

And then you'll have another <VirtualHost> section with ServerName www.example.com for your real server configuration. Apache automatically preserves anything after the / when using the Redirect directive, which is a common misconception about why this method won't work (when in fact it does).

Answer 2

http://example.com/subdir/?lold=13666 => http://www.example.com/subdir/?lold=13666

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Answer 3

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAlias example.com
    RedirectMatch permanent ^/(.*) http://www.example.com/$1
</VirtualHost>

Answer 4

To remove www from your URL website use this code in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1$1 [R=301,L]

To force www in your website URL use this code on .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^YourSite.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourSite.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_fileNAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_fileNAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*[^./]+)$ /$1.html [R=301,L]

Where YourSite.com must be replaced with your URL.

Answer 5

    <VirtualHost *:80>
       DocumentRoot "what/ever/root/to/source"
       ServerName www.example.com

       <Directory "what/ever/root/to/source">
         Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews Includes ExecCGI
         AllowOverride All
         Order allow,deny
         allow from all
         <What Ever Rules You Need.>
      </Directory>

    </VirtualHost>

    <VirtualHost *:80>
      ServerName example.com
      ServerAlias *.example.com
      Redirect permanent / http://www.example.com/
    </VirtualHost>

This is what happens with the code above. The first virtual host block checks if the request is www.example.com and runs your website in that directory.

Failing which, it comes to the second virtual host section. Here anything other than www.example.com is redirected to www.example.com.

The order here matters. If you add the second virtualhost directive first, it will cause a redirect loop.

This solution will redirect any request to your domain, to www.yourdomain.com.

Cheers!

Answer 6

This is similar to many of the other suggestions with a couple enhancements:

• No need to hardcode the domain (works with vhosts that accept multiple domains or between environments)
• Preserves the scheme (http/https) and ignores the effects of previous %{REQUEST_URI} rules.

• The path portion not affected by previous RewriteRules like %{REQUEST_URI} is.

  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ %{REQUEST_SCHEME}://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
  

Answer 7

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^!example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This starts with the HTTP_HOST variable, which contains just the domain name portion of the incoming URL (example.com). Assuming the domain name does not contain a www. and matches your domain name exactly, then the RewriteRule comes into play. The pattern ^(.*)$ will match everything in the REQUEST_URI, which is the resource requested in the HTTP request (foo/blah/index.html). It stores this in a back reference, which is then used to rewrite the URL with the new domain name (one that starts with www).

[NC] indicates case-insensitive pattern matching, [R=301] indicates an external redirect using code 301 (resource moved permanently), and [L] stops all further rewriting, and redirects immediately.

Answer 8

I ran this...

 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.*$ [NC]
 RewriteRule ^/.+www\/(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

I need this to be universal for 25+ domains on our new server, so this directive is in my virtual.conf file in a <Directory> tag. (dir is parent to all docroots)

I had to do a bit of a hack on the rewrite rule though, as the full docroot was being carried through on the pattern match, despite what http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html says about it only being stuff after the host and port.

Answer 9

Redirection code for both non-www => www and opposite www => non-www. No hardcoding domains and schemes in .htaccess file. So origin domain and http/https version will be preserved.

APACHE 2.4 AND NEWER

NON-WWW => WWW:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_SCHEME}://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

WWW => NON-WWW:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_SCHEME}://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Note: not working on Apache 2.2 where %{REQUEST_SCHEME} is not available. For compatibility with Apache 2.2 use code below or replace %{REQUEST_SCHEME} with fixed http/https.

---

APACHE 2.2 AND NEWER

NON-WWW => WWW:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

... or shorter version ...

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS}s ^on(s)|offs
RewriteRule ^ http%1://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

WWW => NON-WWW:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

... shorter version not possible because %N is available only from last RewriteCond ...

Answer 10

If you are using Apache 2.4 ,without the need to enable the rewrite apache module you can use something like this:

# non-www to www
<If "%{HTTP_HOST} = 'domain.com'">
  Redirect 301 "/" "http://www.domain.com/"
</If>

Answer 11

Redirect domain.tld to www.

The following lines can be added either in Apache directives or in .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on    
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http%{ENV:protossl}://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

• Other sudomains are still working.
• No need to adjust the lines. just copy/paste them at the right place.

Don't forget to apply the apache changes if you modify the vhost.

(based on the default Drupal7 .htaccess but should work in many cases)

Answer 12

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAlias example.com
    RedirectMatch permanent ^/(.*) http://www.example.com/$1
</VirtualHost>

This will redirect not only the domain name but also the inner pages.like...

example.com/abcd.html               ==>    www.example.com/abcd.html
example.com/ab/cd.html?ef=gh   ==>    www.example.com/ab/cd.html?ef=gh

Answer 13

Try this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.example.com$1 [R=301]

Answer 14

This is simple!

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Answer 15

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

check this perfect work

Answer 16

Do not allways use Redirect permanent (or why it may cause issues)

If there is a chance that you will add subdomains later, do not use redirect permanent.

Because if a client has used a subdomain that wasn't registred as VirtualHost he may also never reach this subdomain even when it is registred later.

redirect permanent sends an HTTP 301 Moved Permanently to the client (browser) and a lot of them cache this response for ever (until cache is cleared [manually]). So using that subdomain will always autoredirect to www.*** without requesting the server again.

see How long do browsers cache HTTP 301s?

So just use Redirect

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName example.com

  Redirect / http://www.example.com/
</VirtualHost>

Apache.org - When not to use mod_rewrite

Apache.org - Canonical Hostnames

Answer 17

I've just have a same problem. But solved with this

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

This rule redirecting non-www to www.

And this rule to redirecting www to non-www

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^my-domain\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://my-domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Refer from http://dense13.com/blog/2008/02/27/redirecting-non-www-to-www-with-htaccess/

Answer 18

This works for me:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(?!www.domain.com).*$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$  http://www.domain.com$1  [R=301,L]

I use the look-ahead pattern (?!www.domain.com) to exclude the www subdomain when redirecting all domains to the www subdomain in order to avoid an infinite redirect loop in Apache.

Answer 19

The code I use is:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

Answer 20

If using the above solution of two <VirtualHost *:80> blocks with different ServerNames...

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    Redirect permanent / http://www.example.com/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.example.com
</VirtualHost>

... then you must set NameVirtualHost On as well.

If you don't do this, Apache doesn't allow itself to use the different ServerNames to distinguish the blocks, so you get this error message:

[warn] _default_ VirtualHost overlap on port 80, the first has precedence

...and either no redirection happens, or you have an infinite redirection loop, depending on which block you put first.

Answer 21

I had a similar task on a WP Multisite, where the redirection rule had to be generic (for any given domain I'd add to the network). I solved first adding a wildcard to the domain (parked domain). Note the . after .com.

CNAME * domain.com.

And then I added the following lines to the .htaccess file at the root of my multisite. I guess it'd work for any site.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

Hopefully this will help.

ps. If you'd like to redirect from not www to www, change the last line into

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%1/$1 [R=301,L]

Answer 22

I found it easier (and more usefull) to use ServerAlias when using multiple vhosts.

<VirtualHost x.x.x.x:80>
    ServerName www.example.com
    ServerAlias example.com
    ....
</VirtualHost>

This also works with https vhosts.