Apache2 WWW remove FAIL with .htaccess

Question

I want to remove "www" from my domain at apache2. I tryed out lots of examples whiches do it with an .htaccess file but none of them works. So here's my .htacces which is owned by user root with chmod 644:

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

This is not removing the www and if I type http://your-site.com in my browser (Firefox) it redirects me to www.your-domain.com stil. EDIT: It was browser's fail, but prev. problem exists.

My apache2 is setted up for this main domain without www. already and that was my all .htaccess.

Answer 1

The easy solution I use from No WWW, Better SEO is to start each .htaccess with the following:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# FROM www. --TO-- NO www.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

This is just a cut and paste no brainer. It is the first thing on each .htaccess I have on hundreds of sites and domains.

Answer 2

Find the error in apache log:

Invalid command 'RewriteEngine', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

So the problem were apache2 was misconfigured...

Solved with command: sudo a2enmod rewrite from this thread: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11649987/1725341