Redirect non-www to www in .htaccess

Question

I have this in my .htaccess file:

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

but whenever I

Answer 1

This configuration worked for me in bitnami wordpress with SSL configured :

Added the below under "RewriteEngine On" in file /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/conf/httpd-app.conf

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

Answer 2

Change your configuration to this (add a slash):

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

Or the solution outlined below (proposed by @absiddiqueLive) will work for any domain:

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

If you need to support http and https and preserve the protocol choice try the following:

RewriteRule ^login\$ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/login [R=301,L]

Where you replace login with checkout.php or whatever URL you need to support HTTPS on.

I'd argue this is a bad idea though. For the reasoning please read this answer.

Answer 3

Try this, I used it in many websites, it works perfectly

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^bewebdeveloper.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.bewebdeveloper.com/$1  [QSA,L,R=301]

Answer 4

If possible, add this to the main Apache configuration file. It is a lighter-weight solution, less processing required.

<VirtualHost 64.65.66.67>
        ServerName example.com
        Redirect permanent / http://www.example.com/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost 64.65.66.67>
   ServerAdmin me@example.com
   ServerName www.example.com
   DocumentRoot /var/www/example
   .
   .
   . etc

So, the separate VirtualHost for "example.com" captures those requests and then permanently redirects them to your main VirtualHost. So there's no REGEX parsing with every request, and your client browsers will cache the redirect so they'll never (or rarely) request the "wrong" url again, saving you on server load.

Note, the trailing slash in Redirect permanent / http://www.example.com/. Without it, a redirect from example.com/asdf would redirect to http://www.example.comasdf instead of http://www.example.com/asdf.

Answer 5

Here's the correct solution which supports https and http:

# Redirect to www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^[^.]+\.[^.]+$
RewriteCond %{HTTPS}s ^on(s)|
RewriteRule ^ http%1://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Answer 6

Write in .htaccess :)

## Redirect from non-www to www (remove the two lines below to enable)
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]