Subdomain Is Redirected and Causing an Error Because www. is Added

Question

On my site, say example.com, if I try to access test.example.com, Firefox automatically adds www. to test.example.com, making it www.test.example.com, which causes an error. However, if I visit a site like my.ebay.com, no www. is added so no error occurs. What's going on?

Just in case, my .htaccess file is as follows:

Options -Multiviews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php

I looked through Firebug and it seems like Firefox doesn't even make an attempt to reach test.example.com before reverting to www.test.example.com.

One nuance I didn't realize until now. If I try to access the site using test.example.com/, the www. is added. If however that trailing slash is not there, then I am sent to the sub domain properly.

Answer 1

Have you tried to manually adding the protocol prefix?

http://test.example.com won't get redirected.

Options -Multiviews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www(.*)
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.example.com
RewriteRule ^(.*).example.com/(.*)$ http://$1.example.com/$2 [R=301,L]

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

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php

In the future, look at this article: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/714016

Answer 2

There's www automatically added in your url because you stated it in your htaccess rule.

Look at this part:

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

That mean to add www to your url when its not present.

Answer 3

It looks like it was a small glitch or something that was fixed by clearing the browser's history.