Force a webpage to load with www. prefix

Question

My problem is that a particular webpage (where I start a php session) can be loaded either with www.mywebpage.com or just mywebpage.com

And due to how my application works I need it to be an static one. otherwise I can have 2 sessions created (one with www and other without it) and that messes up my data.

I know I can name the session but I wonder if there's a way to force the page to always load with or without the www. prefix? so that the session will always be www.mywebpage.com?

possible duplicate of [.htaccess Remove WWW from URL + Directories](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6515081/htaccess-remove-www-from-url-directories) — bjb568, Feb 13 '14 at 03:44
See the above link, it's best to handle this with `mod_rewrite` — helion3, Feb 13 '14 at 03:45

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:25

I would suggest that you use a rewrite rule to achieve this result.

Inside of your .htaccess file for the virtual host directory in question add the following:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS}s ^on(s)|
RewriteRule ^ http%1://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

This will validate what protocol you are using, check the host value and redirect in a somewhat dynamic way.

I trust this helps.

P.S Please reference this article: .htaccess - how to force "www." in a generic way?

Force a webpage to load with www. prefix

1 Answers1