If you want to redirect all requests to your site to the www version, [www.mysite.com] all you need to do is add the following code to your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
This will redirect any requests to http://mysite.com to http://www.mysite.com. There are several benefits from doing that:
- It will avoid duplication in Google index caches because your
site appears twice, once with the "www." and again without it.
- Reliability of search indexing.
- It's nicer, and more consistent.