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Adding www to a URL

Apache .htaccess Regular Expressions

For a simple solution, add the following to your .htaccess file:

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

In this case a URL of the form https://example.com/index.php?item=1 will be redirected to https://www.example.com/index.php?item=1.

In the example above:

  • RewriteCond defines a test condition.
  • %{HTTP_HOST} uses the host variable from the request (example.com).
  • ! means NOT and ^ means START - so, does not start with www.example.com
  • ( and ) capture whatever is between the brackets for backreference use.
  • \ turns the next character from a control character to an actual character
  • . usually means any character but preceded by \ it means a full stop.
  • ? makes the match optional
  • $ means END (of the optional match).
  • [NC] stands for No Case meaning case insensitive.
  • RewriteRule is valid if the url does not start with www.
  • (.*) is a pattern, in this case a single character repeated 0 or more times, meaning the path part of the URL. It is captured as $1.
  • https://www.example.com/ is the replacement for the host part of the URL.
  • $1 is the captured path.
  • [] contains flags - instructions on what to do.
  • R=301 is an instruction to send a Moved Permanently header.
  • L means Last in set - as a match has been found ignore any subsequent rules.

A more complete solution fixing several other canonicalisation issues at the same time:

RewriteEngine On
#
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]+/)*index\.html?\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*)index\.html?$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
#
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} !^POST
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]+/)*index\.php\ HTTP/
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT}>s ^(443>(s)|[0-9]+>s)$
RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*)index\.php$ http%2://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
#
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www\.example\.com)?$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

If you would like to understand what all of this means you could read these articles: