[redirect] Nginx no-www to www and www to no-www

I am using nginx on Rackspace cloud following a tutorial and having searched the net and so far can't get this sorted.

I want www.mysite.com to go to mysite.com as normal in .htaccess for SEO and other reasons.

My /etc/nginx/sites-available/www.example.com.vhost config:

server {
       listen 80;
       server_name www.example.com example.com;
       root /var/www/www.example.com/web;

       if ($http_host != "www.example.com") {
                 rewrite ^ http://example.com$request_uri permanent;
       }

I have also tried

server {
       listen 80;
       server_name example.com;
       root /var/www/www.example.com/web;

       if ($http_host != "www.example.com") {
                 rewrite ^ http://example.com$request_uri permanent;
       }

I also tried. Both the second attempts give redirect loop errors.

if ($host = 'www.example.com' ) {
rewrite ^ http://example.com$uri permanent;
}

My DNS is setup as standard:

site.com 192.192.6.8 A type at 300 seconds
www.site.com 192.192.6.8 A type at 300 seconds

(example IPs and folders have been used for examples and to help people in future). I use Ubuntu 11.

Ghost blog

in order to make nginx recommended method with return 301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri; work with Ghost you will need to add in your main server block:

proxy_set_header    X-Real-IP           $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-For     $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header    Host                $http_host;
proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-Proto   $scheme;
proxy_set_header    X-NginX-Proxy       true;

proxy_pass_header   X-CSRF-TOKEN;
proxy_buffering     off;
proxy_redirect      off;  

1. Best Practice: separate server w/ hardcoded server_name

Best practice with nginx is to use a separate server for a redirect like this (not shared with the server of your main configuration), to hardcode everything, and not use regular expressions at all.

It may also be necessary to hardcode the domains if you're using HTTPS, because you have to know upfront which certificates you'll be providing.

server {
    server_name www.example.com;
    return  301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;
}
server {
    server_name www.example.org;
    return  301 $scheme://example.org$request_uri;
}
server {
    server_name example.com example.org;
    # real configuration goes here
}

2. Using Regular Expressions within server_name

If you have a number of sites, and don't care for the most ultimate performance, but want every single one of them to have the same policy in regards to the www. prefix, then you can use regular expressions. The best practice of using a separate server would still stand.

Note that this solution gets tricky if you use https, as you must then have a single certificate to cover all of your domain names if you want this to work properly.

non-www to www w/ regex in a dedicated single server for all sites:

server {
    server_name ~^(?!www\.)(?<domain>.+)$;
    return  301 $scheme://www.$domain$request_uri;
}

www to non-www w/ regex in a dedicated single server for all sites:

server {
    server_name ~^www\.(?<domain>.+)$;
    return  301 $scheme://$domain$request_uri;
}

www to non-www w/ regex in a dedicated server for some sites only:

It may be necessary to restrict the regex to cover only a couple of domains, then you can use something like this to only match www.example.org, www.example.com and www.subdomain.example.net:

server {
    server_name ~^www\.(?<domain>(?:example\.org|example\.com|subdomain\.example\.net))$;
    return  301 $scheme://$domain$request_uri;
}

Testing Regular Expressions w/ nginx

You can test that the regex works as expected with pcretest on your system, which is the exact same pcre library that your nginx will be using for regular expressions:

% pcretest 
PCRE version 8.35 2014-04-04

  re> #^www\.(?<domain>(?:example\.org|example\.com|subdomain\.example\.net))$#
data> test
No match
data> www.example.org
 0: www.example.org
 1: example.org
data> www.test.example.org
No match
data> www.example.com
 0: www.example.com
 1: example.com
data> www.subdomain.example.net
 0: www.subdomain.example.net
 1: subdomain.example.net
data> subdomain.example.net
No match
data> www.subdomain.example.net.
No match
data> 

Note that you don't have to worry about trailing dots or case, as nginx already takes care of it, as per nginx server name regex when "Host" header has a trailing dot.

3. Sprinkle if within existing server / HTTPS:

This final solution is generally not considered to be the best practice, however, it still works and does the job.

In fact, if you're using HTTPS, then this final solution may end up easier to maintain, as you wouldn't have to copy-paste a whole bunch of ssl directives between the different server definitions, and could instead place the snippets only into the needed servers, making it easier to debug and maintain your sites.

non-www to www:

if ($host ~ ^(?!www\.)(?<domain>.+)$) {
    return  301 $scheme://www.$domain$request_uri;
}

www to non-www:

if ($host ~ ^www\.(?<domain>.+)$) {
    return  301 $scheme://$domain$request_uri;
}

hardcoding a single preferred domain

If you want a little bit more performance, as well as consistency between multiple domains a single server may use, it might still make sense to explicitly hardcode a single preferred domain:

if ($host != "example.com") {
    return  301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;
}

References:

• http://nginx.org/r/server_name
• http://nginx.org/r/return
• http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/server_names.html

if ($host ~* ^www.example.com$) {
    return 301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;
}

This solution comes from my personal experience. We used several Amazon S3 buckets and one server for redirecting non-www to www domain names to match S3 "Host" header policy.

I used the following configuration for nginx server:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name ~^(?!www\.)(?<domain>.+)$;
    return 301 $scheme://www.$domain$request_uri;
}

This matches all domain names pointed to the server starting with whatever but www. and redirects to www.<domain>. In the same manner you can do opposite redirect from www to non-www.

If you are having trouble getting this working, you may need to add the IP address of your server. For example:

server {
listen XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:80;
listen XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:443 ssl;
ssl_certificate /var/www/example.com/web/ssl/example.com.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /var/www/example.com/web/ssl/example.com.key;
server_name www.example.com;
return 301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;
}

where XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the IP address (obviously).

Note: ssl crt and key location must be defined to properly redirect https requests

Don't forget to restart nginx after making the changes:

service nginx restart

You may find out you want to use the same config for more domains.

Following snippet removes www before any domain:

if ($host ~* ^www\.(.*)$) {
    rewrite / $scheme://$1 permanent;
}

Actually you don't even need a rewrite.

server {
    #listen 80 is default
    server_name www.example.com;
    return 301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;
}

server {
    #listen 80 is default
    server_name example.com;
    ## here goes the rest of your conf...
}

As my answer is getting more and more up votes but the above as well. You should never use a rewrite in this context. Why? Because nginx has to process and start a search. If you use return (which should be available in any nginx version) it directly stops execution. This is preferred in any context.

Redirect both, non-SSL and SSL to their non-www counterpart:

server {
    listen               80;
    listen               443 ssl;
    server_name          www.example.com;
    ssl_certificate      path/to/cert;
    ssl_certificate_key  path/to/key;

    return 301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen               80;
    listen               443 ssl;
    server_name          example.com;
    ssl_certificate      path/to/cert;
    ssl_certificate_key  path/to/key;

    # rest goes here...
}

The $scheme variable will only contain http if your server is only listening on port 80 (default) and the listen option does not contain the ssl keyword. Not using the variable will not gain you any performance.

Note that you need even more server blocks if you use HSTS, because the HSTS headers should not be sent over non-encrypted connections. Hence, you need unencrypted server blocks with redirects and encrypted server blocks with redirects and HSTS headers.

Redirect everything to SSL (personal config on UNIX with IPv4, IPv6, SPDY, ...):

#
# Redirect all www to non-www
#
server {
    server_name          www.example.com;
    ssl_certificate      ssl/example.com/crt;
    ssl_certificate_key  ssl/example.com/key;
    listen               *:80;
    listen               *:443 ssl spdy;
    listen               [::]:80 ipv6only=on;
    listen               [::]:443 ssl spdy ipv6only=on;

    return 301 https://example.com$request_uri;
}

#
# Redirect all non-encrypted to encrypted
#
server {
    server_name          example.com;
    listen               *:80;
    listen               [::]:80;

    return 301 https://example.com$request_uri;
}

#
# There we go!
#
server {
    server_name          example.com;
    ssl_certificate      ssl/example.com/crt;
    ssl_certificate_key  ssl/example.com/key;
    listen               *:443 ssl spdy;
    listen               [::]:443 ssl spdy;

    # rest goes here...
}

I guess you can imagine other compounds with this pattern now by yourself.

More of my configs? Go here and here.

If you don't want to hardcode the domain name, you can use this redirect block. The domain without the leading www is saved as variable $domain which can be reused in the redirect statement.

server {
    ...
    # Redirect www to non-www
    if ( $host ~ ^www\.(?<domain>.+) ) {
       rewrite ^/(.*)$ $scheme://$domain/$1;
    }
}

REF: Redirecting a subdomain with a regular expression in nginx

Unique format:

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name "~^www\.(.*)$" ;
  return 301 https://$1$request_uri ;
}

Here's how to do it for multiple www to no-www server names (I used this for subdomains):

server {
        server_name 
             "~^www\.(sub1.example.com)$"
             "~^www\.(sub2.example.com)$"
             "~^www\.(sub3.example.com)$";
         return 301 $scheme://$1$request_uri ;
}

I combined the best of all the simple answers, without hard-coded domains.

301 permanent redirect from non-www to www (HTTP or HTTPS):

server {
    if ($host !~ ^www\.) {
        rewrite ^ $scheme://www.$host$request_uri permanent;
    }

    # Regular location configs...
}

If you prefer non-HTTPS, non-www to HTTPS, www redirect at the same time:

server {
    listen 80;

    if ($host !~ ^www\.) {
        rewrite ^ https://www.$host$request_uri permanent;
    }

    rewrite ^ https://$host$request_uri permanent;
}

not sure if anyone notice it may be correct to return a 301 but browsers choke on it to doing

rewrite ^(.*)$ https://yoursite.com$1; 

is faster than:

return 301 $scheme://yoursite.com$request_uri;

try this

    if ($host !~* ^www\.){
        rewrite ^(.*)$ https://www.yoursite.com$1;
    }

Other way: Nginx no-www to www

server {
  listen       80;
  server_name  yoursite.com;
  root /path/;
  index index.php;
  return       301 https://www.yoursite.com$request_uri;
}

and www to no-www

server {
  listen       80;
  server_name  www.yoursite.com;
  root /path/;
  index index.php;
  return       301 https://yoursite.com$request_uri;
}

location / { 
    if ($http_host !~ "^www.domain.com"){ 
        rewrite ^(.*)$ $scheme://www.domain.com/$1 redirect; 
    } 
}

You need two server blocks.

Put these into your config file eg /etc/nginx/sites-available/sitename

Let's say you decide to have http://example.com as the main address to use.

Your config file should look like this:

server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        server_name www.example.com;
        return 301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;
}
server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        server_name example.com;

        # this is the main server block
        # insert ALL other config or settings in this server block
}

The first server block will hold the instructions to redirect any requests with the 'www' prefix. It listens to requests for the URL with 'www' prefix and redirects.

It does nothing else.

The second server block will hold your main address — the URL you want to use. All other settings go here like root, index, location, etc. Check the default file for these other settings you can include in the server block.

The server needs two DNS A records.

Name: @ IPAddress: your-ip-address (for the example.com URL)

Name: www IPAddress: your-ip-address (for the www.example.com URL)

For ipv6 create the pair of AAAA records using your-ipv6-address.

Redirect non-www to www

For Single Domain :

server {
        server_name example.com;
        return 301 $scheme://www.example.com$request_uri;
}

For All Domains :

server {
        server_name "~^(?!www\.).*" ;
        return 301 $scheme://www.$host$request_uri;
}

Redirect www to non-www For Single Domain:

server {
        server_name www.example.com;
        return 301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;
}

For All Domains :

server {
         server_name "~^www\.(.*)$" ;
         return 301 $scheme://$1$request_uri ;
}