Question

I have the following code for my .htaccess file that I’ve picked up from here and tried adapting it as I understand from .htaccess, yet I can’t seem to get it to work (or maybe the browser has cached it but I can’t seem to clear it).

Options -Indexes
Options +FollowSymlinks

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

########## FORCE SSL ##########
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase / 

# Non-secure requests to www.domain.com should redirect to https://www.domain.com
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.%{HTTP_HOST} [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www\.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] 

# All secure (HTTPS) traffic should redirect to https://www.domain.com
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.%{HTTP_HOST} [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www\.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [L,R=301] 

</IfModule>

I want to make it as generic a possible so I can simply copy and paste it to any site I make so no need to edit it each time – I guess I could also do this in PHP but I think it would be good if .htaccess is also there.

Another point is, can .htaccess be read if i were to go to http://www.domain.com/.htaccess or do I need to cover that in a ‘deny all’ kind of thing?

Answer 1

The second argument to the RewriteCond must be a regex, so it cannot contain a variable.

Try adding the following to your .htaccess file in place of the rules you had

#capture top level domain (.com or .co.uk)
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ([-_a-zA-Z0-9]+\.([a-zA-Z]{2,5}|co\.uk))$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} (www\.)?(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [E=MY_TLD:%2]

# Non-secure requests to www.domain.com should redirect to https://www.domain.com
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^ https://www\.%{ENV:MY_TLD}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] 

# All secure (HTTPS) traffic should redirect to https://www.domain.com
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
#if host does not start with www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.[-_a-zA-Z0-9]+\.([a-zA-Z]{2,5}|co\.uk)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://www\.%{ENV:MY_TLD}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]