How to Redirect www to non-www in Apache htaccess
Sometimes you may need to redirect www URLs to non-www URLs for your website for SEO benefits. Here’s how to redirect www to non-www in Apache htaccess. You can use these steps to ensure that there is only one version (non-www) of your website available online.
How to Redirect www to non-www in Apache htaccess
Here are the steps to redirect www to non-www in Apache htaccess file. Please ensure that you have enabled mod_rewrite in your Apache web server configuration. Only then your htaccess configuration will be applied by Apache server.
If you have enabled htaccess using mod_rewrite, you can skip to step 4.
1. Enable mod_rewrite
Open terminal and run the following command to enable mod_rewrite on Ubuntu/Debian systems. It is already enabled in CentOS/Redhat systems.
If mod_rewrite is already enabled, you will see an alert message.
Restart Apache web server
Add the following lines just before line.
Restart Apache web server
4. Redirect www to non-www in Apache htaccess
Let’s say you want to redirect all URLs from www.example.com to example.com
Add the following lines in your htaccess file.
In the above lines the RewriteCond directive checks HTTP_HOST value of every request. If it begins with www.example.com, then RewriteRule directive permanently redirects it to example.com along with original URL string. If you want to redirect only temporarily, use R=302 above, instead of R=301.
5. Restart Apache Server
Restart Apache web server
Now your Apache web server will automatically redirect www URLs to non-www URLs.
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Apache redirect www to non-www and HTTP to HTTPS
The increasing adoption of HTTPS as the default connection protocol for websites has introduced a few new challenges to developers and system administrators, such as the need to consolidate a canonical domain by redirecting non-HTTP sites to HTTPS, in addition to redirecting www to non-www host name (or vice-versa).
Introduction
Here I show how to redirect a site from www to non-www (or viceversa) and from HTTP to HTTPS, using the Apache server configuration. To be more clear, the configuration will redirect the following host names:
I’ll also show a small change to redirect the non-www to the www version, if you prefer the www.
Apache Configuration
How it works
Since I’m not a huge fan of cut-and-paste tutorials, let’s try to understand how the configuration works. That would help you to make the necessary modifications, if needed.
The first line enables the Apache runtime rewriting engine, required to perform the redirect. You may have already enabled it in a previous config in the same file. If that’s the case, you can skip that line.
These two lines are are the redirect conditions, they are used to determine if the request should be redirected. Because the conditions are joined with an [OR], if any of those two conditions returns true, Apache will execute the rewrite rule (the redirect).
If you know the host name in advance, you may improve the rule by inlining the URL and skipping this condition (see later).
The RewriteRule is the heart of the redirect. With this line we tell Apache to redirect any request to a new URL, composed by:
All these tokens are joined together, and represents the final redirect URI. Finally, we append 3 flags:
Remarks
As I’ve already mentioned, my example uses an extra RewriteCond line to extract the host name, and avoid to inline the hostname in the rule. If you feel this is a performance penalty for you, you can inline the host directly in the rule:
Conclusion
This articles provides a simple configuration to redirect www and non-HTTPS requests to the canonical site domain. This is very useful to avoid content duplication issues with search engines, and offer an improved experience to your users.
If you search online there are dozens of ways to perform a redirect in Apache, this is just one of the possibilities and it may not cover all the possible cases. Hopefully, with the explanation in the How it works section you will be able to customize it to your needs.
Related Posts
Filed under: Softwares Internet — About: servers Apache htaccess redirects HTTPS
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How To Redirect www to Non-www with Apache on Ubuntu 14.04
Published on May 4, 2015
Introduction
If you want to perform this type of redirect with Nginx as your web server, you should follow this tutorial instead: How to Redirect www to non-www with Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04.
Prerequisites
This tutorial assumes that you have superuser privileges, i.e. sudo or root, on the server that is running Apache. If you don’t already have that set up, follow this tutorial: Initial Server Setup on Ubuntu 14.04.
It is assumed that you have Apache installed. If you do not already have this set up, there are several tutorials on the subject under the Apache tag.
You must be able to add records to the DNS that is managing your domain. If you do not already have a domain, you may purchase one from a domain registrar, and manage it with the registrar’s DNS or DigitalOcean’s DNS. In this tutorial, we will use the DigitalOcean DNS to create the necessary records.
Let’s get started by configuring your DNS records.
Configure DNS Records
In order to set up the desired redirect, www.example.com to example.com or vice versa, you must have an A record for each name.
Open whatever you use to manage your DNS. For our example, we’ll use the DigitalOcean DNS.
Next, add another A record with “www” as the hostname (or “www.example.com” if the partial subdomain doesn’t work), and specify the same IP address.
When you have created both records, it should look something like this:
Note: This will also work with CNAME records, as long as the canonical name’s A record refers to the IP address of your Apache web server.
Now your server should be accessible via the www and non-www domain, but we still need to set up the redirect. We’ll do that now.
Enable Rewrite Module
In order to perform the 301 redirect, we will use the Apache mod_rewrite, or Rewrite, module. Doing so will ensure that your users can access your site with or without the www. prefix, and be redirected to the domain that you prefer.
First, enable the mod_rewrite module with this command:
Add the following Directory directive to the configuration and be sure to substitute the DocumentRoot for the highlighted part:
Now restart Apache to put the change into effect:
Configure Rewrite Module
Change directories to your DocumentRoot, in our case, /var/www/html :
Of course, if you haven’t created the file before, it will be blank. Depending on which direction you want to redirect, use one of the following options.
Option 1: Redirect www to non-www
If you want redirect users from www to a plain, non-www domain, insert this configuration:
Save and exit. The changes should go into effect immediately. Note that if you are using HTTPS, you should update “http”, in the RewriteRule line, to “https”.
Use this curl command to ensure that the non-www domain redirects to the www domain (replace the highlighted part with your actual domain):
You should get a 301 Moved Permanently response, that shows the non-www redirect location, like this:
Of course, you should access your domain in a web browser (www and non-www) to be sure.
Option 2: Redirect non-www to www
If you want redirect users from a plain, non-www domain to a www domain, insert this configuration:
Save and exit. the changes should go into effect immediately. Note that if you are using HTTPS, you should update “http”, in the RewriteRule line, to “https”.
Use this curl command to ensure that the non-www domain redirects to the www domain (replace the highlighted part with your actual domain):
You should get a 301 Moved Permanently response, that shows the www redirect location, like this:
Of course, you should access your domain in a web browser (www and non-www) to be sure.
Conclusion
That’s it! Your Apache redirect is now configured properly, and your users will be able to access your web server via your non-www and www domain.
If you would like to understand more about mod_rewrite, the Apache feature that we used to implement the redirect, feel free to read this tutorial: How To Set Up Mod_Rewrite.
Software Engineer @ DigitalOcean. Former Señor Technical Writer (I no longer update articles or respond to comments).
Редирект домена с www на без www на Apache в Ubuntu 14.04
Когда сайт или приложение запущены на домене, часто возникает необходимость позволить пользователям открывать его при помощи простого домена и поддомена www. То есть, пользователи должны иметь возможность посетить домен и с префиксом www, и без него (например: example.com или www.example.com), и при этом получить доступ к одному и тому же контенту. Существует множество способов решения этой проблемы. Лучше всего заранее определиться, какой домен вам подходит больше (с префиксом или без), а затем настроить переадресацию второго домена на основной. Такой редирект называется постоянным (Permanent Redirect), или 301. Его настройки содержатся в конфигурациях DNS и веб-сервера.
Это руководство покажет, как настроить редирект URL-а с префиксом www на URL без префикса на веб-сервере Apache в системе Ubuntu 14.04 (например, с www.example.com на example.com).
Примечание: Аналогичную статью для CentOS 7 можно найти по этой ссылке. Чтобы настроить такую переадресацию на веб-сервере Nginx в Ubuntu, читайте данную статью.
Требования
Для выполнения инструкций нужны права суперпользователя (sudo или root). Подробнее об этом можно узнать в статье «Начальная настройка сервера Ubuntu 14.04».
Кроме того, нужно предварительно установить Apache. Полезные статьи по установке и настройке этого веб-сервера можно найти в специальном разделе данного сайта.
Также нужно иметь возможность добавлять DNS-записи.
Настройка DNS-записи
Чтобы настроить редирект с www.example.com на example.com (или наоборот), нужно создать запись для каждого имени.
Откройте панель управления DNS.
Если записи домена ещё не существует, создайте её сейчас. В hostname укажите доменное имя (к примеру, example.com), в поле IP address нужно указать внешний IP-адрес сервера Apache. Некоторые системы создают запись A, которая указывает на заданный IP-адрес, автоматически, а некоторые требуют создавать эти записи вручную.
Затем создайте еще одну запись А, на этот раз для адреса с префиксом www, указав тот же IP-адрес.
Примечание: Такой редирект работает и с записями CNAME, поскольку запись А канонического имени привязана к IP-адресу веб-сервера Apache.
Теперь сервер доступен по двум доменам: с префиксом www и без него. Можно начинать настройку редиректа.
Включение модуля mod_rewrite
Для настройки редиректа 301 в Apache используется модуль mod_rewrite, который позволяет переадресовывать пользователей на любой необходимый домен (в том числе и на домен без префикса www).
Чтобы включить модуль, используйте команду:
sudo a2enmod rewrite
Теперь можно приступать к настройке редиректа Apache.
sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf
Найдите DocumentRoot сайта и запишите его (по умолчанию это каталог /var/www/html).
Затем добавьте в файл директиву Directory, указав DocumentRoot:
Add to Apache configuration
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
Сохраните и закройте файл.
sudo service apache2 restart
Настройка модуля Rewrite
Этот файл будет пуст (если только он не был создан предварительно). Выберите направление редиректа и следуйте инструкциям соответствующего раздела.
1: Редирект с www на без www
Чтобы настроить редирект пользователей с домена с префиксом www на домен без него, внесите следующий код:
htaccess — www to non-www
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %
Сохраните и закройте файл. Изменения немедленно вступят в силу. Обратите внимание: при использовании HTTPS необходимо заменить http в строке RewriteRule на https.
Затем используйте следующую команду curl, чтобы убедиться, что редирект настроен верно (не забудьте указать свой домен):
На экране должен появиться вывод, сообщающий о точке переадресации:
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Fri, 01 May 2015 21:18:33 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu)
Location: http://example.com/
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
После этого нужно проверить переадресацию при помощи браузера.
2: Редирект домена без www на домен с www
Чтобы настроить переадресацию пользователей с обычного домена без префикса www на домен с www, добавьте в файл:
.htaccess — non-www to www
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %
Сохраните и закройте файл, после чего изменения будут активированы. При использовании HTTPS не забудьте заменить http в строке RewriteRule на https.
Затем используйте следующую команду curl, чтобы убедиться, что редирект настроен верно (не забудьте указать свой домен):
На экране появится сообщение, которое показывает, что точкой редиректа является домен с префиксом:
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Fri, 01 May 2015 21:18:33 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu)
Location: http://www.example.com/
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Конечно, после этого необходимо также проверить редирект в браузере.
Заключение
Как видите, настроить редирект на сервере Apache довольно просто. Теперь сайт доступен по двум доменам: с префиксом и без.
Чтобы получить более подробную информацию о mod_rewrite, читайте руководство «Настройка Mod_Rewrite».