How do I redirect to a non-www version and make it the default URL?

Question

How can I redirect my website to a non-www version and also make the non-www version the default version.

This is what I want:

https://example.com/

And this is what is currently appearing on my site:

https://www.example.com/

Answer 1

This process can be broken into 2 steps:

Using .htaccess for Redirection

First, you should redirect any traffic from www to non-www version of your website, by using a simple rewrite rule:

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

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

This works for any website regardless of the domain, and covers both HTTP and HTTPS.

Defining the Canonical

If you are not using any SEO plugin, I suggest you add a line for search engines, to tell them which one of the protocols is the main. This can be done by using a code like this:

add_action( 'wp_head', 'add_my_canonical' );
function add_my_canonical(){
    echo '<link rel="canonical" href="'.site_url().'" />'
}