htaccess Redirect problem with internal pages

Question

When I type http://mywebsite.com my server redirects successfully to http://www.mywebsite.com but when I type http://mywebsite.com/page.php it redirects to http://www.mywebsite.com not to http://www.mywebsite.com/page.php .

My server is Apache, I use these lines to redirect from non-www to www in my .htaccess

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

Thanks

Answer 1

Try it like this:

# Redirect non-www to www
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

Or to redirect ot HTTPS:

# HTTP OVER SSL
  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
  RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Answer 2

I would suggest the following:

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

I think your condition was being too strict. You were ending it ( $ ) too soon.

Answer 3

I'd rather use this if you want to add a www at the start of your url if none exists :

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

Answer 4

I do not recommend redirecting users to the in the .htaccess. You should do that in the config file for the virtual host if possible, using a temporary redirect, or permanent if appropriate, for visitors coming from a non http port (eg 80).

It might look something like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName mywebsite.com
   ServerAlias www.mywebsite.com
   DocumentRoot "/var/www/mywebsite.com"
   Redirect / https://www.mywebsite.com/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
   ServerName mywebsite.com
   DocumentRoot "/var/www/mywebsite.com"
   Redirect / https://www.mywebsite.com/
   ... SSL stuff
   .... your https config for mywebsite here, with SSLCertificate, I believe you need a separate one for without www, to redirect to www.
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
   ServerName www.mywebsite.com
   DocumentRoot "/var/www/mywebsite.com"
   SSL STUFF****
</VirtualHost>

Then in the .htaccess you should not need any rewriting at all.

I believe the problem with the other answers, is that you were rewriting the location for a file, when it should be in the format of %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_URI}, so you might have an error handler sending you back to the home page. So check your error logs and access logs.