How to do a rewrite rule in web.config

Written by Shai Ben-Naphtali Monday, 1 March 2010

If you would like to do a domain URL redirection from domain.com to www.domain.com or vise versa, you can do something like this:

Place either of these (depending on what you’d like done. And edit to match your domain) inside the <system.webServer></system.webServer> tags in the web.config of the domain.

<rewrite><rules>
<rule name=”Add WWW prefix” >
  <match url=”(.*)” ignoreCase=”true” />
    <conditions>
      <add input=”{HTTP_HOST}” pattern=”^domain\.com” />
    </conditions>
  <action type=”Redirect” url=”http://www.domain.com/{R:1}”
    redirectType=”Permanent” />
</rule>

—

<rule name=”Remove WWW prefix” >
  <match url=”(.*)” ignoreCase=”true” />
    <conditions>
      <add input=”{HTTP_HOST}” pattern=”^www\.domain\.com” />
    </conditions>
  <action type=”Redirect” url=”http://domain.com/{R:1}”
    redirectType=”Permanent” />
</rule>
</rules></rewrite>

13 Comments

1. Chris   |  Tuesday, 23 March 2010 at 2:20 pm

   Hi,

   This is great info! I just wanted to point out a little typo in the script:
   


   Should be:

   redirectType="Permanent">


   
2. Gary Bartlett   |  Sunday, 18 April 2010 at 10:07 am

   Hi,

   I would like to use this method to point different domains to different folders on my site, because I’m using HelpConsole as my website editing application. HelpConsole resides in /wwwroot and creates websites in subfolders. What would the code look like?

   If the domain is prodsol.com or http://www.prodsol.com, then go to the prodsol (/wwwroot/prodsol) folder;
   If the domain is http://www.systemicthinking.com, then go to the systemic (/wwwroot/systemic) folder;

   Thanks very much!

   Regards

   Gary

   
3. Arvand Sabetian   |  Wednesday, 21 April 2010 at 8:40 pm

   You would create the website then change the root path by clicking on each website.

   
4. darko   |  Monday, 07 June 2010 at 12:28 pm

   hi,
   this is not working???
   My hosting company have windows platform, I think they IIS6.
   I get run time error with this code..

   
5. Arvand Sabetian   |  Thursday, 10 June 2010 at 7:06 am

   Unfortunately the instructions are for IIS 7. You may wish to try our hosting with the coupon code ‘mvchosting’ to try this out yourself on our platform.

   
6. Christian Gnoth   |  Tuesday, 15 June 2010 at 12:28 am

   Hello,
   I tried to arrange an redirect for few files to the main index.php file on a godaddy windows iis7 webserver with the following rule:

   it is not working.

   The complete web.config files is:

   Can you please take a look what could be the reason for the error?

   
7. Christian Gnoth   |  Tuesday, 15 June 2010 at 12:31 am

   the comment form do not takes my rules:

   it was :

   match url=”file-name.php”
   action type redirect url with http index.php redirectype permanent

   
8. Gaurav Rana   |  Wednesday, 10 August 2011 at 5:18 am

   how can i write a rule to internally redirect from rocalabs.com/terms to rocalabs.com/terms.aspx ? We already have ur hosting account

   
9. karan   |  Wednesday, 19 October 2011 at 12:23 pm

   would I be using the same rewrite rule above for pointing an old file say index-old.aspx to index-new.aspx to ensure that all SERP and traffic stays the same.

   
10. Subhash Chand Sharma   |  Friday, 10 February 2012 at 7:24 am

    really very nice post… its working fine for me..
    Thanks to Shai Ben-Naphtali.

    
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