From mysite.com to www.mysite.com

[marciano]

From an old post from JdMorgan I see

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [mysite.com...] [R=permanent,L]

to redirect mysite.com to www.mysite.com

My question is if is it necessary the slash before $1 as it may appears double in browsers

Is this better?

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [mysite.com$1...] [R=permanent,L]

[g1smd]

The first code would be used in .htaccess where the leading slash is not present in $1.

The second code would be used in httpd.conf where the leading slash is present in $1.

[marciano]

Ah, okay, I am using it in httpd.conf
Thank you

[jdMorgan]

An alternative for use in server config files outside of any <Directory> containers is

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com(\.|:[0-9]+)$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} [A-Z]
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] 

When only a single hostname is to be used (i.e. no additional subdomains), then a simpler rule-set is:

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

Both of these rule-sets take care of most non-canonical variants of the hostname, as well as showing an alternate way to handle the leading slash on the URL-path.

Note that in server config files, the use of separate RewriteConds is faster than using the "local-OR" inside a regular expression.

Jim