This is something that has been irritating me for a while now, I like to remove and force removal of the www. in front of all websites that I own and host. However the only examples I have ever found online use the domain name in the re-write rule. Which means that every .htaccess file has to be altered to give the domain name that the site is using.
I have since discovered code which will implement the re-write rule but without explicitly specifying the domain name, you can now redirect all www. pages to non-www without having to specify your domain name in your .htaccess file.
Force removal of www from URL:
Here is the code snippet:
RewriteEngine On
# Force NO www RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.*)$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]
Force use of www in URL:
And just in case you are looking for the opposite and force www in all URL’s then here is the solution:
RewriteEngine On
# Force YES www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
Why do either?
It is important that you force one method or the other, as allowing for either could cause problems and inconsistency's.
A few important benefits include:
- It will avoid duplicate content problems with search engines such as Google.
- It will avoid the possibility of split page ranking and/or missing rankings.
- It is nicer and more consistent for you and your visitors.
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