Enforce site-wide SSL on Debian LAMP

Question

I have a Debian/Linux Lenny LAMP server w/Plesk Panel 10.2. I have a PHP/MySQL webapp deployed in a Plesk "webspace".

I want to enforce SSL on site-wide.

Do I just forward port 80 to 443? For my single domain cert, do I forward www.domain.com to domain.com or do I forward domain.com to www.domain.com?

Should this happen with .htaccess or some vhost config file?

Answer 1

I would use mod_rewrite.

Enable mod_rewrite and add something like this to your vhost config

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !On
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301]

Answer 2

You can configure it in your vhost config. For example have a VirtualHost for the HTTP protocol on port 80 that redirects your users to the HTTPS version:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin you@domain.com
        ServerName domain.com
        Redirect / https://domain.com/
</VirtualHost>