Sometimes you want to make sure that your website is accessed through a consistent URL. And I am always looking around for the piece of code used in the htaccess file that either removes or adds the ‘www’ to the URL domain.

As I am always referring to it, I thought I’d add it here to help me and help others who may find it useful.

The htaccess configuration file is very powerful and what’s covered here is just the tip of the ice-berg.

These settings are for an Apache server but there’s also a way to use this in a Windows IIS setup with ISAPI being enabled.

Let’s get started.

Create a file named ‘.htaccess‘ and edit it with Notepad.
If you want to remove the www from all your URLs then add the following code to your file:

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

Or, if you want add the www to all your URLs then add the following code to your file:

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

Then place the .htaccess file in the root of your web folder or whichever folder your domain points to and it should work.