When you have a website or web application behind a domain, then your users can access your website by the domain name and the www sub domain.
For example, this website is accessible through https://driesdeboosere.dev (without www sub domain) and https://www.driesdeboosere.dev (with www sub domain).
When a user goes to https://www.driesdeboosere.dev then that user will be redirected to https://driesdeboosere.dev (_without the www _).
To achieve this on a Nginx server you'll need to do the following:
Configure DNS
In order to set up this redirect, www.driesdeboosere.dev
to driesdeboosere.dev
or visa versa, you must have an A record for the domain (driesdeboosere.dev) and an A record for the sub domain (www.driesdeboosere.dev).
- Create an A record for your domain name (e.g.
driesdeboosere.dev
) and set the IP address to the public IP address of your Nginx server (e.g.165.22.205.49
). - Next, add another A record for your sub domain (e.g.
www.driesdeboosere.dev
) and specify the same IP address.
It should look something like this:
Now your servers is accessible by the www and non-www domain, but we still need to configure the redirect. That's the next step.
Configure Nginx redirect
We can do two redirects, a 301 or a 302 redirect. Learn about the difference between the two.
In our case, we want a permanent 301 redirect, so that all traffic through www.driesdeboosere.dev redirects to driesdeboosere.dev. We'll setup a new Nginx server block that points to your original server block.
- Login to your server
- Enter following command:
sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/redirect.conf
Depending on which direction you want to redirect, use one of the two options below.
Option 1: Redirect www to non-www
If you want to redirect your users from www to non-www domain, insert following configuration in the editor:
server {
server_name www.driesdeboosere.dev;
return 301 $scheme://driesdeboosere.dev$request_uri;
}
Save and exit.
To make the changes take effect, restart Nginx by entering following command:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
Test your redirect in the browser; entering www.driesdeboosere.dev will redirect to driesdeboosere.dev.
We can test this with a curl command, enter following in PowerShell:
curl -I www.driesdeboosere.dev
You should get a 301 Moved Permanently
response like this:
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Server: nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu)
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2021 13:04:32 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 194
Connection: keep-alive
Location: https://driesdeboosere.dev/
Option 2: Redirect non-www to www
If you want to redirect your users from non-www to www domain, insert following configuration in the editor:
server {
server_name driesdeboosere.dev;
return 301 $scheme://www.driesdeboosere.dev$request_uri;
}
Save and exit.
To make the changes take effect, restart Nginx by entering following command:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
Test your redirect in the browser; entering driesdeboosere.dev will redirect to www.driesdeboosere.dev.
We can test this with a curl command, enter following in PowerShell:
curl -I driesdeboosere.dev
You should get a 301 Moved Permanently
response like this:
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Server: nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu)
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2021 13:04:32 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 194
Connection: keep-alive
Location: https://www.driesdeboosere.dev/
Conclusion
That’s it! Your Nginx permanent redirect is now configured properly, and your users will be able to access your web server via your non-www and www domain.
Difference between a permanent and temporary redirect
301 redirect (Permanent)
A 301 redirect is an permanent redirect. This way we inform search engines and browsers that a page is permanent redirected to a new address. The old address will be removed from the search engines and be replaced by the new address.
302 redirect (Temporary)
A 302 redirect is an temporary redirect. This way we inform search engines and browsers that a page is temporary redirected to a new address.
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