How do I get rid of the “www” with mod_rewrite?

Question

I want to get rid of the "www" in front of my domain, and I'm trying the following, but it's not working:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_POST} ^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^/(.*)       http://example.com/$1 [L,R]

Basically, what I hope to accomplish is that someone going to "www.example.com" would be redirected to "example.com."

Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong?

I've even tried substituting the second line for this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_POST} www\.example\.com [NC]

Answer 1

Assuming your .htaccess is on the right place with the right permissions and your Apache server is configured to use it and mod_rewrite is enabled:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$
RewriteRule ^/?(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Note the HTTP_HOST vs HTTP_POST in your example and that I use a 301 redirect. This is better since some links may point to the www version and this will let them count towards your SEO ranking. Search engines will eventually always send people to the right place.