.htaccess not rewriting URL to HTTPS

Question

I have this code in my .htaccess to rewrite my URL from http://123domain.com to https://www.123domain.com but it's not working?

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\..+$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} (.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%1/$1 [R=301,L]

arkascha · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-09 13:01:26Z

1

The internet is full of solutions for this. None of all those examples answered your question?

You cannot do both rewritings in a single step in a reliable manner. Instead you need two steps:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule .* https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule .* https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,R=301]

Note: in case you are using a very old http server version you have to replace the END flags with L flags, should work the same in this case.

And a general hint: you should always prefer to place such rules inside the http servers host configuration instead of using dynamic configuration files (".htaccess"). Those files are notoriously error prone, hard to debug and they really slow down the server. They are only provided as a last option for situations where you do not have control over the host configuration (read: really cheap hosting service providers) or if you have an application that relies on writing its own rewrite rules (which is an obvious security nightmare).

answered Feb 9, 2017 at 13:01

arkascha

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5 Comments

Primoz Rome Over a year ago

I appreciate all your comments on the issue, but for now the easiest way for me is to use .htaccess. I will dig into host configuration once I get it working this way. BTW: I tried your code but I am getting internal server error.

Primoz Rome Over a year ago

As suggested I had to use L instead of END

arkascha Over a year ago

Sure, that means you are using a very old version of the apache http server. That will work fine, as long as you do not have interference with other rewriting rules.

Primoz Rome Over a year ago

Thanks. Is there a good resource somewhere about host configuration and how this is properly done? I want to learn.

arkascha Over a year ago

First step certainly is the official documentation. It is of excellent quality as typical for OpenSource projects and comes with great examples. The http servers rewriting module is documented here: httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html

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