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I want to have a 4 conditional mod_rewrite.

http to https
http://example.com to https://example.com

www. to non-www.
https://www.example.com to https://example.com

non-plural ending to plural ending domain
https://www.example.com to https://examples.com

.com (or that is not .co) domain extension to .co
https://www.example.com to https://examples.co

I so far have this code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://example.co%{REQUEST_URI} [L,NE,R=301]

I am having trouble finding an example to create change example to examples and .com (or other non-.co) to .co.

Can I add to the above code or do I need to create another RewriteRule as well?

Note, I want to maintain all subdomains (except www.) also if someone writes www.subdomain.example.com, I want to keep the subdomain to but remove leading www. and change example.com to examples.co.

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1 Answer 1

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Your additional "note" at the end regarding subdomains is really the main complication here.

So, the canonical domain is examples.co. Any request for anything other than the canonical domain needs to be redirected to the canonical domain.

Try the following:

RewriteEngine On

# Redirect HTTP to HTTPS and remove any www subdomain and trailing dot (FQDN)
# NB: Potentially includes a subdomain
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(?:www\.)?(.+?)\.?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [L,NE,R=302]

# Canonicalise the hostname "examples.co" and retain an optional subdomain
# NB: The www (sub)subdomain has already been removed.
#     Potentially includes a subdomain.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !examples\.co$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.]+\.)?examples?\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://%1examples.co%{REQUEST_URI} [L,NE,R=302]

The first rule primarily strips the optional www subdomain (or sub-subdomain). The %1 backreference contains the hostname less the www subdomain (if any) and less any trailing dot (a FQDN) - as captured by the CondPattern ^(?:www\.)?(.+?)\.?$.

The second rule canonicalises the domain name. Any optional subdomain is captured (in the %1 backreference) and everything after this is ignored. We already know that the requested hostname does not end in examples.co (by the first condition).

This will result in at most 2 redirects. The second redirect occurs when a non-canonical domain is requested.

For example:

  • Request http://www.examples.co/foo => https://examples.co/foo.
  • Request http://www.example.com/foo => https://example.com/foo => https://examples.co/foo.
  • Request http://www.subdomain.example.com/ => https://subdomain.example.com/ => https://subdomain.examples.co/.

Test with 302 (temporary) redirects to avoid caching issues. Only change to a 301 when you have confirmed that it's working OK. You will need to clear your browser cache before testing.

This does assume you are not implementing HSTS. If you are then you will need to redirect HTTP to HTTPS first on the same host.

Just to note, if you are using standard wildcard subdomains (as suggested in your other question) then a request for https://www.<subdomain>.<domain> will likely get stopped by the browser (and consequently no redirect will occur), since the SSL cert won't be valid.

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  • Awesome answer. I have one problem, this is resulting in a example.co//path-to-something with two slashes
    – Maciek Semik
    Feb 15, 2019 at 4:10
  • Is that example.co with no s? What is the URL being requested that results in such a redirect? The double slash can't be caused by these directives alone - unless perhaps there is a conflict with existing directives? Do you have other directives? In what context are these directives? server, virtualhost, <Directory> or .htaccess?
    – MrWhite
    Feb 15, 2019 at 11:51

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