Force www redirects to home page, htaccess errors

Question

I have a product page that loads fine when I type in the www with the URL (www.domain.com/product), but when I don’t, it redirects to the home page(domain.com/product -> www.domain.com). I'm using Magento.

I’ve been searching and tried the htaccess method that all the other threads mention but to no avail:

############################################ 
## 301 the url for SEO 
RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

Redirect 301 /home http://www.example.com/ 
############################################

When I add this, I either see no change or the whole site goes down with a 500 error: too many rewrites.

My main domain works fine with or without the www. This is what my htaccess looks like:

############################################
## uncomment these lines for CGI mode
## make sure to specify the correct cgi php binary file name
## it might be /cgi-bin/php-cgi

#    Action php5-cgi /cgi-bin/php5-cgi
#    AddHandler php5-cgi .php

############################################
## GoDaddy specific options

#   Options -MultiViews

## you might also need to add this line to php.ini
##     cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1
## if it still doesn't work, rename php.ini to php5.ini

############################################
## this line is specific for 1and1 hosting

#AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
#AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

############################################
## default index file

DirectoryIndex index.php

<IfModule mod_php5.c>

############################################
## adjust memory limit

#    php_value memory_limit 64M
php_value memory_limit 256M
php_value max_execution_time 18000

############################################
## disable magic quotes for php request vars

php_flag magic_quotes_gpc off

############################################
## disable automatic session start
## before autoload was initialized

php_flag session.auto_start off

############################################
## enable resulting html compression

php_flag zlib.output_compression on

###########################################
# disable user agent verification to not break multiple image upload

php_flag suhosin.session.cryptua off

###########################################
# turn off compatibility with PHP4 when dealing with objects

php_flag zend.ze1_compatibility_mode Off

</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_security.c>
###########################################
# disable POST processing to not break multiple image upload

SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>

############################################
## enable apache served files compression
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#gzip

# Insert filter on all content
###SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
# Insert filter on selected content types only
#AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript

# Netscape 4.x has some problems...
#BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
#BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip

# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
#BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

# Don't compress images
#SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary

# Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
#Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary

</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>

############################################
## make HTTPS env vars available for CGI mode

SSLOptions StdEnvVars

</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

############################################
## enable rewrites

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

############################################
## you can put here your magento root folder
## path relative to web root

#RewriteBase /magento/

############################################
## workaround for HTTP authorization
## in CGI environment

RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

############################################
## always send 404 on missing files in these folders

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(media|skin|js)/

############################################
## never rewrite for existing files, directories and links

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l

############################################
## rewrite everything else to index.php

RewriteRule .* index.php [L]

</IfModule>


############################################
## Prevent character encoding issues from server overrides
## If you still have problems, use the second line instead

AddDefaultCharset Off
#AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

<IfModule mod_expires.c>

############################################
## Add default Expires header
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#expires

ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"

</IfModule>

############################################
## By default allow all access

Order allow,deny
Allow from all

###########################################
## Deny access to release notes to prevent disclosure of the installed Magento version

<Files RELEASE_NOTES.txt>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>

############################################
## If running in cluster environment, uncomment this
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#etags

#FileETag none

Anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

Avoid using both RewriteRule and Redirect. They are different modules, and can interact strangly, resulting in unusual side effect.

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

RewriteRule ^home$ / [L,R=301]

Also try clearing your browsers cache, as 301's are cached very aggressively.

edit

After your comment and reading your original question more thoroughly I think you placed the www-rules in the wrong location. Try putting those rules to the top your current htaccess file.