I want to redirect anyHOST.anyTLD to www.anyHOST.anyTLD

Question

I'm trying to find a generic enough modrewrite rule that will acomplish following:

• Redirect anyHost.anyTld to www.anyHost.anyTld
• Not mess with any other subdomains, for examle other.anyHost.anyTLD should be left alone

Can you help? Does this slow down server too much?

Answer 1

Zach's answer will not work with subdomains like forum.example.com, the next rules checks whether the host equals example.com. If it does, it will be redirected to www.example.com. No rules will be processed after this one (L = Last).

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

This does not cause a server slowdown, but if you really want to get every single performance bit out of it, you could create a virtual host with domain example.com with a redirect rule:

NameVirtualHost 1.2.3.4:80
<VirtualHost 1.2.3.4:80>
    ServerName example.com
    Redirect / http://www.example.com/
</VirtualHost>
# other hosts here

Virtual Hosts documentation

Answer 2

You should be able to use something like this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.(.*)$

RewriteRule (.*) $1/$2 [NC]

Let me know how it turns out, I don't have access to an Apache machine to test it right now :)