When using PHP as an Apache module, you can change the configuration settings using directives in Apache configuration files (e.g. httpd.conf and .htaccess files). You will need “AllowOverride Options” or “AllowOverride All” privileges to do so. If you control your own Apache configuration, you can and should use httpd.conf. If you do not control your Apache configuration (such as on a shared hosting server), you must use .htaccess files.

Directions

1. First look for the file, htaccess.txt in your root directory. It should have been installed during the Joomla! installation. (Note that this file name does not begin with a dot.) Open and carefully read htaccess.txt. It contains important suggestions on how to protect your site.

2. Make any adjustments to this file as appropriate for your site, and then save it in your site’s home directory as, .htaccess including the dot.

3. Test your site’s front end and back end. If it produces errors, rename the file back to htaccess.txt, and troubleshoot your edits. If you are unable to get this working, you may have to leave the file named htaccess.txt.

4. Use phpinfo() to ensure that all configurations set as you intended. Note: Web-accessible files that include phpinfo() are potential security risks they offer attackers lots of useful information about your server. Always remove such files after use.

While some people prefer to not use “www” in their web site URL, some prefer that it always be there. Either way, it can sometimes be useful to have a single canonical name by which your site can be accessed.

To force the use of “www” when viewers are reading your site, you can use the following mod_rewrite rule in your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.net$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.example.net/$1 [L,R]

This will ensure that anyone just typing your domain name in their browser ends up with the full name instead.

Reasons for Requiring WWW

Many domains offer a variety of services across many different hosts. These hosts are usually referenced using the server’s fully-qualified domain name (FQDN). This name takes the form of host.domain. So in the FQDN foo.example.net, you can see that the host “foo” is part of the “example.net” domain.

By convention, the web server hosting the main site for a domain can be referenced by using the hostname “www” (which is itself usually an alias, or CNAME record, to the servers actual FQDN). If you want to see the main site for example.net, a good bet would be to try going to www.example.net. Other services are generally offered using the same naming convention. Our example domain’s mail server might be mail.example.net, while their FTP server might be ftp.example.net.

Configuring your web server to also answer to just “example.net” is often done as a convenience for users or as a way to shorten your URL. There is no requirement that this shortcut work and, while most domains do utilize this, many do not.

Notes

While most domains configure their main web server to answer to both forms, most do not bother with this type of redirection from one to the other. Ultimately, as long as the content served is the same, it doesn’t usually matter what name is used to get to a given site.

One consideration when deciding whether to redirect “example.net” to “www.example.net” (or vice-versa) is that of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Many search engines blacklist sites that “mirror” their site (have the same content at multiple URLs) under different domains and/or sub-domains. Spiders may not blacklist for a “www” mirror, but better to play it safe by picking one and redirecting the other to it.

There was a small movement at one time to get people to use “web” instead of “www” in their site names, thinking that it makes just as much sense and it’s easier to say “web.example.net” instead of “www…”

Some web developers prefer to remove the “www” from their website domain URL. Although I am personally skeptical about this practice. There are supporter for this practice, the general reasons for removing “www”, to quote from www. is deprecated, the inspiration for this article:

“By default, all popular Web browsers assume the HTTP protocol. In doing so, the software prepends the “http://” onto the requested URL and automatically connect to the HTTP server on port 80. Why then do many servers require their websites to communicate through the www subdomain? Mail servers do not require you to send emails to recipient@mail.domain.com. Likewise, web servers should allow access to their pages though the main domain unless a particular subdomain is required. Succinctly, use of the www subdomain is redundant and time consuming to communicate. The internet, media, and society are all better off without it.”

To automatically remove the www from the beginning of your domain, add the following mod_rewrite rule to your .htaccess file. If you don’t have that file, create it in a text editor and upload it to your root directory. The code assumes your domain is called example.com, so you will need to change it to match your domain:

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

Many web evangelist companies like Google and Yahoo still keep the www. To adopt this practice or not is totally up to you. If you have any better idea to use or not to use this, feel free to let me know!

If you would like to redirect your files or directories, but are worried about search engines or favorites that are linked to your old files or directories, add the following example to the .htaccess file. Just replace the filename and extension with your own.

Redirect permanent /filename.html http://www.example.com/filename.php
Redirect permanent /shell/install-ubuntu/ http://www.blog.highub.com/linux/install-ubuntu/

The first line above will redirect a link from filename.html to the new filename.php. The second line redirect directory. I believe it is required to have the entire http: protocol for the new file.