Nginx, unable to redirect www domain to https non www domain when using certbot

Question

Despite being there a lot of examples online I have tried a lot of stuff, specifically using if statements, but so far ive been unable to setup my vhost properly

So my vhost is

    a1.example.com

www.a1.example.com should redirect to https://a1.example.com
a1.example.com should redirect to https://a1.example.com

The goal is to redirect it to https non-www every single time.

This is my vhost so far, im using certbot

server {
     server_name a1.example.com www.a1.example.com;
     root /var/www/example/build;

     index index.html index.htm;

     location / {
          try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
     }

    listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/a1.example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/a1.example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot

}
server {

    if ($host = a1.example.com) {

    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
   }
     listen 80;
     listen [::]:80;
     server_name a1.example.com www.a1.example.com;
    return 404; # managed by Certbot

}

This does redirect from http to https, but im unable to do the redirect www to nonwww

My current dns records are

A @ IP
A a1 IP
CNAME www domain
CNAME www.a1 www.a1.domain

Please take an attention I missed question sign in regex (`^(?:www\.)a1\.example\.com$` instead of `^(?:www\.)?a1\.example\.com$`). I have already corrected the answer. — Ivan Shatsky, Sep 16 '21 at 11:38

Ivan Shatsky · Accepted Answer · 2021-09-16T10:20:38.977

I think the best answer on this subject was given by @MichaelHampton here. As a quick fix you can add

if ($host = www.a1.example.com) {
    return 301 https://a1.example.com$request_uri;
}

to your HTTPS server block and change if ($host = a1.example.com) { ... } in HTTP server block to

if ($host ~ ^(?:www\.)?a1\.example\.com$) {
    return 301 https://a1.example.com$request_uri;
}

Anyway I totally agree with Michael Hampton that you shouldn't allow certbot to alter your nginx configuration and use it only for getting/renewing certificates (see his answer for well written nginx config example).

Nginx, unable to redirect www domain to https non www domain when using certbot

1 Answers1