Using 301 redirect to cover both www and https redirects

[ChanandlerBong]

I am going to bite the bullet and change my site over to https in last weekend of July.

I already have the following doing a non-www-to-www redirect

# SET ALL URLS TO WWW VERSIONS
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www\.example\.com)?$ 
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I can just add the 's' in there, but that wouldn't catch http-to-https, would it?

is it "http?s" I would need to do to catch both http and https?

[not2easy]

No, all you need to change is add the s after http in the target URL so the last line becomes

RewriteRule (.*) https://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] 

That's how mine is and the switch went quite smoothly. My host suggested that I add one more rule and I did, but I don't see it as a "must have", they said it took care of scripts and external resources:

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^80$
RewriteRule ^.*$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

These lines should be after all other Rewrite Rules. (Unless you're using a CMS such as WP that has its own rules - then theirs comes after these rules).

[ChanandlerBong]

ah ok, so I don't need anything that covers both http and https in the first line, the RewriteCond line, because all eventualities are covered by %{HTTP_HOST} ?

[lucy24]

You need two RewriteCond, separated by OR:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www\.example\.com)?$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on

A ? in the target has a completely different meaning than a ? in the pattern. Putting https?:// like that in the target will lead to a browser error when the rule deploys. (This is why we have test sites.)