Nginx config not redirecting

Question

I have my nginx config and I am trying to redirect from a non www. version of the site to the www. version.

server {
listen       80;
server_name  *.example.com example.com;
rewrite ^ https://www.example.com$request_uri permanent;
}
server {
 listen      443 ssl;
 server_name www.example.com;
 ssl_certificate      /etc/ssl/www.example.com/www.example.com.crt;
 ssl_certificate_key  /etc/ssl/www.example.com/www.example.com.key;

}

When I do the curl -I I get a 301 permanently moved Location: https://example.com

Answer 1

You actually have two servers configured, one for regular (http) access and another for secure access (https)

In a server section for a server that you are going to redirect non-www request to www you need to add the following at the beginniging:

set $primary_domain www.yourdomian.com;
if ($host != $primary_domain) {
    rewrite  ^(.*)$ http://$primary_domain$1  permanent;
}

This will actually redirect all hosts configured in this server to www version, not only empty sub domain. Make sure to remove a section starting with return is such a case as it would make another redirect and you could end up in an endless loop.