Need help with .htaccess file (www. redirection)

[projectwealth]

Hello there,

I'm going completely insane with a new website of mine at the moment.

I'm hosting with hostgator.com and they use an apache server. The problem is when I type my website name into the browser http://www.richandjobless.com for some reason it redirects to http://richandjobless.com

For branding reasons I want to keep the www.

The default .htaccess file reads as follows:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

I've tried to edit the .htaccess file to redirect to www. by adding the following code:

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

but it redirects back to www. then the non-www address in an infinite loop so it doesn't help much at all.

Does any one have any ideas why this is happening and what I can do to fix it?

FYI... I don't know if this helps but the contents of the index.php file that the .htaccess file refers to is as follows:

<?php
/* Short and sweet */
define('WP_USE_THEMES', true);
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
?>

Any and all suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks very much,

Dave

[TechSup]

Add this to your .htaccess file

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

Change the rules to your site to force a redirect.

[projectwealth]

Hi Steven,

That's for replying so quickly! Much appreciated.

I just tried that piece of code out but unfortunately I'm getting the same infinite redirect loop.

Any other ideas? It seems to be dead set on redirecting to the non-www address

[nasty.web]

dig www.richandjobless.com.

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.richandjobless.com. 14400   IN      CNAME   richandjobless.com.
richandjobless.com.     14387   IN      A       74.53.26.226

You should change your DNS records. Setup your www domain to be A type record, not a CNAME alias.

[projectwealth]

Hi Nasty,

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. I've done that now. It said to allow up to 24 hours for the setting to take effect so I guess I'll just wait now

I'll be back to post the outcome tomorrow.

Thanks again,

Dave