RewriteRule for 'www.' always redirects to the front page

Patch created.

Changed version to 6.x-dev as this issue is certainly still valid in the current HEAD .htaccess file.

I'm not sure if the patch needs to be rerolled for 6.x-dev, so I've also changed the status back to code needs review.

Is this the right way to do this? Or should I have raised a new issue for 6.x-dev? If anyone knows, please let me know.

I'm not sure that the cleaned up comments have helped with the understanding of the no-www issue. We are not forcing users to use www. or not use www., we are just redirecting users if they visit our non-preferred address.

The current patch looks like this:

# If your site can be accessed both with and without the 'www.' prefix, you
# can use one of the following settings to force users to use (or not to use)
# the 'www.' prefix. Choose ONLY one option:
#
# To force users to access the site WITH the 'www.' prefix,
# adapt and uncomment the following:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC]
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]
#
# To force users to access the site WITHOUT the 'www.' prefix,
# adapt and uncomment the following:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

I think it should be changed to this:

# If your site can be accessed both with and without the 'www.' prefix, you
# can use one of the following settings to redirect users to your preferred url
# (either with or without the 'www.' prefix). Choose ONLY one option:
#
# To redirect users to your site WITH the 'www.' prefix,
# (eg. a user visiting http://example.com/... will be redirected
# to http://www.example.com/...)
# adapt and uncomment the following:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC]
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]
#
# To redirect users to your site WITHOUT the 'www.' prefix,
# (eg. a user visiting http://www.example.com/... will be redirected
# to http://example.com/...)
# adapt and uncomment the following:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

I think this clarifies the no-www problem for both advanced and novice users.

Changed status back to 'code needs review'.