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What a mess!  And so much time trying to figure out how to fix it, all to no avail.  As a last resort, I draw on you guys' collective knowledge.  Please help!

 

I've got the following issue.

 

http://www.mysite.com/forums --> works!

https://mysite.com/forums --> works!

https://www.mysite.com/forums --> DOES NOT WORK!

 

The forums are SMF and have issues with SSL.  That having been said, if I can change all links that have www in them and link to either the forums directory or a sub-directory of forums and strip out the www then everything would work great.  I cannot find a solution for this specific problem.  FYI - the file structure for the site is relative.  It seems to me that the simplest fix would be to do this:

 

if URL contains "/forums" and "www" remove the "www".  An even better fix would be to do this only when HTTPS is on.

 

Thank you guys in advance.

 

I would like to implement the "inconsistent" www/no www thing while I work no the SSL problem.  I am not sure that the SSL issue can be fixed, as SMF is known to have issues around SSL.  I am looking for a proper fix, but in the meantime my forums are messed up for a large percentage of visitors.

Surprised it's so difficult. I guess SMF doesn't have a way of setting a base URL like "https://www.example.com/forums/"? I have heard horror stories about SMF... Oh well.

And you know that your site should be either www or no-www, right? Supporting both isn't good.

 

Rewrite https+www to https?

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} =www.mysite.com
RewriteRule ^/?forums(/|$) https://mysite.com%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
Note that SMF must be able to have its form POST to the correct URL - if it does not then the forums may break and URL rewriting can't fix it.

Thank you for your reply.  The code you've provided does not work -- still having the same issue.

 

Also, why is it not good to support www. and non-www.??

 

Seems to me this is a good idea, because it appears as though Google Webmaster Tools encourages separate listings for www. and non-www. indexing, as well as a separate listing for https indexing.  Am I mis-understanding something there?

Edited by xProteuSx

Did you know to put that in an .htaccess at the root of the site? Do you also have a RewriteEngine in there, which is necessary for any mod_rewrite stuff to work?

 

I'm not sure about it "encouraging" separate listings. To search engines, example.com and www.example.com are two sites. If you have the same content on both then that gets both penalized for duplicate content. Look at what other sites do when you go to www and no-www versions - they (the ones who know what they're doing) will redirect you to one version.

requinix,

 

Yes, I do know how to add this code to the .htaccess, and I do have RewriteEngine on.  Still, the code you have provided does not work, and I can't figure out why or what to do.

 

As per the separate listings, this is the message (direct copy and paste) I get from Google Webmaster Tools when I "add a new property" (ie. domain/website):

 

-----------------------

Add all your website versions

Make sure you add separate Search Console properties for all URL variations that your site supports, including https, http, www, and non-www.

----------------------------

 

If I am doing something wrong, I'd like to know.  All hail master "Google!"   ;)

 

It almost seems that, according to that message you should add the following versions of your site:

 

http with www

http without www

https with www

https without www

 

It seems ridiculous, but that's what I've understood.

Yes, I do know how to add this code to the .htaccess, adn I do have RewriteEngine on.

That message is because the different variations of the URL are treated as different sites, so if you want to see all the stats you have to add them all. That's a situation you generally want to avoid, and you do that by settling on one version of your URL and redirecting everything else to that single version.

 

See Use canonical URLs and Set your preferred domain.

 

Once you've settled on one version of your URL and redirect everything else you can add just that version and track all the stats.

kicken, thank you for your post.  The Site Settings, however, only allow a selection of www. or non-www. domains, and specifies nothing in regards to https.  I had a Mod Rewrite setup that redirected all traffic to https://www.mydomain.com/... but it seemed to have reduced my traffic significantly.  I re-listed three versions of my site at Webmaster Tools (http://www.mysite.com, https://www.mysite.com, and http://mysite.com) and traffic went up for a while, and its dropped off significantly again.

 

What do you suggest?

 

I would like to redirect everything to https://www.mysite.com.  Should I do this using the .htaccess and mod_rewrite, and keep only the same version up and running at Google Webmaster Tools?  My content changes very frequently, and I hate having to resubmit three sets of sitemaps for three versions of the site ...

 

BTW - thank you very much you guys (requinix and kicken)

If you want https + www then you will want to redirect everything else to that URL. How exactly you do that would depend a bit on what kind of configuration you want to use.

 

I configure all my sites manually so what I do is have the http vhost do a simple redirect to the https vhost, then in the https vhost fix the www vs non-www via mod-rewrite. For example:

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerName example.com
	ServerAlias www.example.com
	
	Redirect permanent / https://www.example.com/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:443>
	ServerName example.com
	ServerAlias www.example.com

	RewriteEngine On
	
	#Force www
	RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !=www.example.com
        RewriteRule ^/(.*) https://www.example.com/$1 [QSA,R=301,L]
</VirtualHost>
If you're using some software package to manage your hosting configuration you'll have to work with it to do your redirecting.

 

If you have to do it all using mod_rewrite it'd be something like this (i think, not tested)

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !=www.example.com
RewriteRule ^/(.*) https://www.example.com/$1 [QSA,R=301,L]
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