.htaccess - how to force "www." in a generic way?

Question

This will change domain.com to www.domain.com:

# Force the "www." RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.domain\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L] 

How do I replace the "domain" part so that this works on any domain?

Answer 1

I would use this rule:

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

The first condition checks whether the Host value is not empty (in case of HTTP/1.0); the second checks whether the the Host value does not begin with www.; the third checks for HTTPS (%{HTTPS} is either on or off, so %{HTTPS}s is either ons or offs and in case of ons the s is matched). The substitution part of RewriteRule then just merges the information parts to a full URL.

Answer 2

This will do it:

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