Apache folder redirects also lose www

Question

Let's say I have the domain "example.com" which works both with and without the "www." prefix.

And let's say I have a folder thereon called "extra".

When someone visits www.example.com/extra I would expect Apache to redirect them to www.example.com/extra/. But no! Instead, they're sent to example.com/extra/. Losing the www. prefix means that (a) a new session is generated, and the user is signed out, and (b) the security certificate becomes invalid.

I'm using Apache on a shared hosting platform (hsphere).

.htaccess file is as follows:

ErrorDocument 500 "<h2>Application error</h2>Web application failed to start properly"

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php/$1
</IfModule>

Answer 1

I guess it is because of a UseCanonicalName directive in your Apache httpd configuration. Just set it to UseCanonical off or delete the directive.