Can't redirect using 301 and .htacces - html

Question

I've just begun learning CSS and HTML.
I bought a domain from HostGator to upload my tiny website.
I used CyberDuck to upload all of my things.
Then I found out about a thing called .htacces which I did not have in the WWW folder and I've tried "making" one.
Then I tested the site using Nibbler and it keeps saying "There is duplicate content" and that I should do this: "Choose one domain that you would like to use and then set a permanent (HTTP 301) redirect to forward users who visit the other."
I found a lot of REWRITES AND REDIRECTS but I could not to make any of them work.
What do I need to write to not have a "duplicate" site (or to solve the Canonical Website Address (This is how it's called I think)) ???
Let's say my site name is: http://www.FirstSite.net and I want all "FirstSite" searches to go to https://FirstSite.net or FirstSite.net but still being a https.
I wrote https with an s because I want to make the site secure (if that is even possible).
I've been modifying the .htacces from gator's cPanel and I am using Google Chrome.
Thank you for reading this manuscript !
This is all that I've copy-paste into it (I forgot what those without a # do (the last 2 paragraphs)) :
# MAIN DEFAULTS
Options +ExecCGI -Indexes
DirectoryIndex index.html
DefaultLanguage en-US
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
ServerSignature Off
# compress text, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and XML
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
# remove browser bugs
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
Header append Vary User-Agent
#HTACCES Security
<Files ~ “^.*\.([Hh][Tt][Aa])”>
order allow,deny
deny from all
satisfy all
</Files>
# 1 WEEK 1 DAY
<filesMatch “.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf|ico)$”>
Header set Cache-Control “max-age=691200, public”
</filesMatch>
# 1 WEEK 1 DAY
<filesMatch “.(xml|txt|js)$”>
Header set Cache-Control “max-age=691200, proxy-revalidate”
</filesMatch>
# 1 WEEK 1 DAY
<filesMatch “.(html|htm|css|php)$”>
Header set Cache-Control “max-age=691200, private, proxy-revalidate”
</filesMatch>
Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.html [L]
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.html [L]
</IfModule>

Answer 1

To make your website secure you must have a valid SSL certificate. It's not just putting s with http
If you already have one installed with your domain. You can use the code below for you domain address to force SSL(redirect).
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} firstsite\.net [NC]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.firstsite.net/$1 [R,L]
To resolve the canonical or duplicate website issue, please use
# Fix the non-www to www canonicalization issue:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]
# Fix the canonical issue vecause of index files
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)//(.*)$
RewriteRule . http://www.firstsite.net%1/%2 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /(([^/]+/)*)index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule index\.html$ http://www.firstsite.net/%1 [R=301,L]\
Change firstsite.net with your domain name and the name and extension of the index file based on your server settings.
If Using ngnix Server Redirect www to non-www
Strip www from url with nginx redirect
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.example.com;
return 301 http://example.org$request_uri;
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name example.com;
...
#The rest of your configuration goes here#
}
So you need to have TWO server codes.