Published in April 2018

Ubuntu Server is a Linux distribution that is ideally suited to server workloads. For example: hosting websites and web applications.

One of the annoying things I find about some Linux distributions (Ubuntu included) is that packages are “frozen in time” through the life of a release. For example, Ubuntu 16.04 was released with PHP 7.0. However PHP 7.2 is now the latest release. Vendors typically apply security fixes to their packages, but you’re still missing out on new features.

… but I’m OK with it.

A few days ago I sat in an airport lounge in Gatwick, waiting for our flight to Florida. I had finished a diet Coke and was chewing on a piece of yoghurt-covered honeycomb (which was delicious, FYI) when I read a news article about Brexit that stunned me.

Europe dumps 300,000 UK-owned .EU domains into the Brexit bin

There are several scenarios in which you may want to redirect all your website visitors to a single, primary domain in Apache:

• Redirect the www and non-www (root domain) hostnames of your domain to avoid duplicate content and improve SEO
• Redirect an old domain to a new domain, maintaining links and search engine reputation
• Redirect secondary domains (e.g. “spelling mistake” domains, or alternative-spelling domains) to your primary domain

I have recently implemented the following on my own website, and I would like to share this Apache trick.