How can I redirect a URL with aliases or redirect?

Question

Hi all,
I have this partially working on my servers, but am not 100% sure I am doing this corerectly.
Basically I have a Web site domain, let's call it product.com
In server admin I have a site set up called www.product.com under port 80 and another under port 443 for my SSL pages.
Here is my problem: If a customer types "product.com" in their favorite Web browser address bar, I would very much like the server to automatically redirect them (if that's the correct term) to "www.product.com"   Currently they would end up on http://product.com/index.html when they key in the URL without the "www"  I am concerned this is hurting my SEO and Google analytics as well as being an issue internally for PHP pages that are coded to the "www" addresses.
I also have a sign-in page for my clients at the address: http://www.product.com/lib/app/auth/authenticate.php.  When a client types "signin.product.com" I want them to go to that long URL for the sign-in page.  I have gotten this to work by setting up a new Site in Server Admin > Web > Sites named "signin.product.com" which then has a single entry on the redirect tab with the URL of the signin page above.  Not sure if that could have been done on the core Web site (www.product.com) or if that was the way I should do it under Server Admin or if there is an easier way to do it.
Primarily I want to be able to handle redirecting any type of subdomain "xxx.product.com" to another address.  The primary one I want to deal with now is the "product.com" redirecting to "www.product.com".....  Should I just set up another Web site in Server Admin with a redirect like I did for "signin.product.com"?
Any advice on doing proper redirection appreciated.
-- Jon

Answer 1

There are so many ways you could do this. You need to pick what's right for you.
Some of the options are available through the GUI. Many more are available once you get under the hood and drive Apache directly. Your skill and comfort level will undoubtedly influence which path you take.
At the first level, Apache groups sites together by the hostname used to access the site.
If you want 'www.product.com' to go to the same place as product.com you could create one site with an alias, so that Apache uses the same 'site' configuration for both hostnames.
If you want the two hostnames to do different things then you could create two sites - in this case 'www.product.com' has the full, normal site and 'product.com' has a redirect to the equivalent page on 'www.product.com'.
Within www.product.com you can also setup selective redirects to the HTTPS site. This will ensure that things like the login form are accessed securely. In this way your HTTPS site is another 'site' in Apache with the SSL configuration.
One caveat in your post is the use of 'signin.company.com'. You don't describe your network, but if you have only 1 public IP address then this is going to be an issue since you cannot easily run multiple SSL sites on a single IP address - you'll need a different public IP address for each SSL site. This is because the SSL negotiation occurs before Apache knows what site the request is for, and therefore it doesn't know which SSL certificate to use for the connection.
So, in general, you'll create one site for each variation in your web setup - one for 'www.product.com/port 80', one for 'www.product.com/port 443', one for 'product.com/80' (which redirects to 'www.product.com'), and so on.