htaccess doesnt remove index.php if WWW is in the URL - .htaccess

Question

Using Htaccess, I am able to remove the www from the url but im struggling endlessly with completely removing the index.php.
I am using the codeigniter framework and I checked my config file.
$config['index_page'] = '';
$config['base_url'] = '';
Ive also tried: as someone suggested elsewhere on S.O:
$config['base_url'] = '/';
My htaccess file looked like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
#Force non-www:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.mywebsite\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mywebsite.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Ive tried all the different versions of writing the mode-rewrite rule, this one works the best but it adds a question mark to the URL and a forward slash
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)\?*$ index.php?/$1 [L,QSA]
The result at the moment, if i type www.mywebsite.com, it will change to mywebsite.com, which is correct.
But if I type www.mywebsite.com/someuri then it becomes www.mywebsite.com/index.php?someuri
with the last modrewrite rule the url becomes
www.mywebsite.com/?/someuri
I then tried adding the question mark after index.php like this:
# Now the CodeIgniter part
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|resources|robots\.txt)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L,QSA]
With the latter, if i type index.php into the URL, it doesnt go away.
I clearly dont understand mod-rewrite, can someone please guide me in the right direction.

Answer 1

Try the following
Open config.php and do following replaces
$config['index_page'] = "index.php"
to
$config['index_page'] = ""
In some cases the default setting for uri_protocol does not work properly. Just replace
$config['uri_protocol'] ="AUTO"
by
$config['uri_protocol'] = "REQUEST_URI"
HTACCESS
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|resources|robots\.txt)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L,QSA]

Answer 2

Try the following
Open config.php and do following replaces
$config['index_page'] = '';
to
$config['index_page'] = 'index.php';
config base_url
$config['base_url'] = '';
to
$ark_root = "http://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$ark_root .= str_replace(basename($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']),"", $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']);
$config['base_url'] = $ark_root;
.htaccess
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .* index.php?/$0 [PT,L]