3 Redirects: https, www, and root

[StevenOliver]

Hello.

To redirect "non-www to www" and "non-https to https," I found this efficient three-liner:

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

I would also like to redirect /index.html to root, what's the best way? (By "best," I mean fewest redirects and least strain on Apache.)

Examples:
http://example.com/data.html redirects to https://www.example.com/data.html
http://example.com/index.html redirects to https://www.example.com/

Thank you.

[requinix]

I kinda feel like being tricky.

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/index\.html(\?|$)
RewriteRule ^index\.html$|(.*) https://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

 

[StevenOliver]

Requinix, thank you very much! That is fantastic!!

I know it's a week later.... but I purposely didn't check back for a few days because I wanted to see what I could come up with all by myself :-)

The goal was twofold
1. No more than one redirect.
2. Least amount of strain on Apache.

Here's what I came up with:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /index\.html$
RewriteRule (.*?)(index\.html)?$ https://www.example.com$1 [NE,R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

And just now I saw your reply. My code has 5 lines. Your code has 4 lines. You win! You beat me!

I'll use your code, less lines of code means less work for the Apache server.

Thank you!!!

[requinix]

It also means one less redirect. Your method can result in two: first to remove the index.html, second to use HTTPS with the right subdomain.

Also yours doesn't allow for query strings on index.html.

And a slight edit to mine:

RewriteRule ^/?index\.html$|/?(.*) https://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

 

[StevenOliver]

I just discovered a problem though.

The redirects work most of the time.... for example:

http://example.com/merchandise.html correctly redirects to
https://www.example.com/merchandise.html

However,

http://example.com/blog redirects to
http://example.com/blog/ (just adds a trailing slash but no https)

-and-

Erratic results using same browser, clearing browser's cache inbetween tests:

example.com/blog sometimes redirects to
https://www.example.com (omits the subdirectory)

http://example.com/blog sometimes redirects to
example.com/blog (omits the 'http' entirely, doesn't add trailing slash)

example.com/blog sometimes redirects to
example.com/blog./ (just adds a trailing slash, but no https)

hmmm....

[StevenOliver]

edit: (update):

Because I no longer need the "index.html to /", this is the current code:

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

However, the problem is this code forgets to force the "www" when inputting a URL like "example.com/directory"

example.com/directory resolves to https://example.com/directory/ instead of the desired "https://www.example.com/directory/"

[requinix]

Then it must mean the rewriting isn't working anymore because that's what you had before. Have you changed anything else?

[StevenOliver]

No, nothing changed. In about an hour I'll be at my other computer, and I'll try a scientific test: I'll place the same code on 2 different webhost's servers using fresh blank .htaccess files, and newly created "test" subdirectories with a "hello world" index file in each one.

Then I'll try again and see if http://example.com/testdirectory redirects to http://www.example.com/testdirectory/

I'll come back here and post the results.

Thank you.

[StevenOliver]

No sense.... just makes no sense.... now the redirect is working. And it is working on ALL my sites. There is absolutely 100% no reason it should stop working, then all of a sudden *after* I post my question here it suddenly starts working.... no sense. Perhaps I'll go out on a limb and say it's browser caching, because I have a 30-day mod_expires directive in my htaccess. However, I did keep my browser's cache cleared between tests.... I wonder if it's possible that Apache, itself, was sending out cached results? Or my IP caches pages? It's not my area of expertise, so I'm just guessing.

[requinix]

Browsers can remember redirects. Personally, I always use incognito mode when doing web development specifically so I can avoid issues like this.

[StevenOliver]

I have a followup question. I'm thinking it belongs in a new thread, so I'll try creating a new thread :-)