How to redirect non-www to www without hardcoding using .htaccess?

Question

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

...causes a perfect, non-hardcoding 301 redirect from "www to non-www", what would the exact opposite look like?

EDIT:

According to Prix' post I've changed the .htaccess file to the following:

Options +FollowSymLinks
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /
  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%1/$1 [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

As already mentioned, this redirects to http://www./ unfortunately. Who can help?

Solution 1

Prix almost had it. When you negate the RewriteCond (with !) it doesn't capture so %1 is empty. Two possible solutions:

Dummy RewriteCond:

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

%{HTTP_HOST} in RewriteRule:

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

Solution 2

In summation, a clean, tested version of the code:

This works (for me) to redirect www to non-www

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

Either one of these work (for me) to redirect non-www to www

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

or

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

Solution 3

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.+)\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www\.%2/$1 [R=301,L]

the ! means if it does not start with "www..." then send it to www.%1 which is the (.+)

Comments

[George Norberg]

thx prix! unfortunately, this rule redirects to ""

[George Norberg]

please advise...

[Prix]

try adding `` before the dot on the url, i update the above code but in general it should catch %1

[George Norberg]

I've added the whole thing... anything wrong here?

[George Norberg]

Tried your fix, but still doesn't work.

[Misha Slyusarev]

Yepp but I was looking for a "one-fits-it-all", non-hardcoding rule. What I really don't understand is that rewriting from www to non-www works... but not the other way round!?

[Prix]

Hmmm this one is harder then i expected it to be, the reason it does not receive the %1 is because the first rule is meant to catch what does not match with it so it doesnt capture anything on %1 to be used bellow, so you gona need an extra rule to detect what it got.

[Prix]

Not sure if this update will work aswell but give it a try and let me know, dont forget to clean you cache so it doesnt reuse pre-cached data to confuse the job. The above one might works for subdomains but might not for domain.com

[MastaJeet]

Your "final" answer won't work. It will remap example.com to www.com.

[Prix]

well all i can say is that you need a condition to match in order to have a filled %1 or %N depending on where you set your parathensis, i dont have a server to test these rules right now but i am sure i am close :P

[Prix]

^(.+)$ this will catch subdomain aswell so %1 would do odd things, not a good way to go, same with your second rule. For example, if user typed subdomain.domain.com it would try to make subdomain.domain.com/$1

[MastaJeet]

No, if you typed subdomain.domain.com it would make www.subdomain.domain.com which is exactly what is asked for. I tested these rules on a running apache.

[Uatec]

Thank you, guys - you really made my day! Without the leading "/" in RewriteRule both solutions work for me. So, which one is preferred here, maybe less "performance-sapping"?

[MastaJeet]

Use the leading /. Without the leading / in the RewriteRule was causing / to appear twice. E.g., example.com/foo/bar was being rewritten to example.com//foo/bar

[Uatec]

@embobo: With my Apache configuration I cannot confirm this. Using the leading "/" causes a 403 error but it's working just perfectly without it - example.com/foo/bar gets www.example.com/foo/bar . Btw: Would it be possible to exclude subdomains from the rule(s)? www.subdomain.example.com looks a little strange to me... ;-) THX

[Uatec]

And what's about forcing a trailing slash for every subfolder within the domain, e.g. example.com/foo/bar will be rewritten to example.com/foo/bar/ - that would be a kind of "holy grail" IMHO... ;-)

[MrWhite]

"Use the leading /." - You should only use the leading slash on the RewriteRule pattern if these directives are in a server or virtualhost context. In a directory context (or .htaccess - as in the question), then the slash prefix should be removed as it simply won't match anything.

[Jeaf Gilbert]

redirect www to non-www works well for me, +1 for dynamic domain name, thank you.