Question

Ok, so I have to do some work on a client site – and for some reason, they have both the www. subdomain and the empty subdomain in use, with different websites. They do NOT want this.

They want the www. subdomain ONLY (that is, they want the empty subdomain to redirect to www.)

That’s how it is set up in WordPress, supposedly.

Here’s my .htaccess file:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)(\.htm|\.html)$ /contact [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

#php_flag display_errors on
#php_value error_reporting 8191

Can anyone interpret this? (I am not very familiar with .htaccess files – anyone who has any resources on them would be helpful). How do I make it so that anyone going to http://examplesite.com goes to http://www.examplesite.com, for example.

How are there two different websites on the same domain? I’m looking in the public_html folder and there appears to be NO reference to the other site at all – nothing, no files, nada.

Answer 1

To force using www subdomain, you can add this code :

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

Here is what those line does :

1. Check the HTTP_HOST, which must be domain.com
2. Take the current request and add it after www.domain.com/ ($1 represents the request caught)
3. Use the generated url as a 301 redirection (permanent redirection) with [R=301] tag
4. Doesn’t read next rules if this one is caught, with [L] tag
5. Forward GET datas, with [QSA] tag.

You must put this code after those two lines :

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

Which set the Rewrite engine on, and define the base url.

Be careful : redirection doesn’t forward POST datas. Be sure alwayse use www subdomain in your code (this can easily be done using a centralized base_url).

Have a look here to understand better htaccess files.