On a joomla site, apache, shared hosting, I'm using next .htaccess rule: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] The problem is that the browser's address bar text does not change from example.com to www.example.com. It seems the redirect actually works because all the links on the pages are changed to www. And after clicking on any link from there it always continues to have www added. The problem is the first page (no matter which one) that is loaded using browser's address bar - like example.com or example.com/random-page. Solved. The redirect actually works.