https redirects + Cloudflare Page Rules missing situation

Question

I have just moved my website to https and after some scares it is working, mostly.

I did find out that when I input the naked domain on the browser it is not going to the desired URL, as follows:

• typed URL = example.com
• redirects to = https://example.com
• desired URL = https://www.example.com

The following Page Rule is set on Cloudflare:

• pattern = http://*example.com/*
• rule = Forwarding to https://www.example.com/$2

On the origin server, the .htaccess file has:

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off

RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

What am I missing?

Answer 1

%{HTTP_HOST} will refer to whatever host the site was accessed through. ie. example.com or www.example.com. To always redirect to www.example.com then simply put this in the substitution:

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule .* https://www.example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

But unless you had a similar rule before then both example.com and www.example.com would have been accessible (and possibly indexed). In fact, if you access https://example.com now it does not redirect to https://www.example.com. You also need the following, in addition to the above:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !www\.
RewriteRule .* https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

So, in summary, the first block corrects for HTTP -> HTTPS and the second corrects if the www subdomain is omitted. I also removed the parentheses in your pattern (.*) since you aren't capturing it for the substitution.

These two rule blocks could be combined into one if desired...

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !www\.
RewriteRule .* https://www.example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]