add www to url and remove .php from url - .htaccess

Question

So I need the urls to look like this
www.mydomain.com/about
here is my current HTACCESS code
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
# Turn mod_rewrite on
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# don't touch /forum URIs
RewriteRule ^forums/ - [L,NC]
# hide .php extension snippet
# To externally redirect /dir/foo.php to /dir/foo
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s([^.]+)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R,L]
# To internally forward /dir/foo to /dir/foo.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*?)/?$ $1.php [L]
# To remove www header
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [L,R=301]
# To add www header
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ www.mydomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.*index [NC]
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) /$1$2 [R=301,L]
#404 redirect
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.mydomain.com/
I think the problem is arising in the removing php area. I think its removing the .php and rewriting the url as mydomain.com/about while at the same time, the "add www header" rule is forcing the www in. How can this be fixed?

Answer 1

Options +MultiViews
# Turn mod_rewrite on
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# To add www header
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [QSA,L,R=301]
# To Remove .php-extension from url
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)\.php$
RewriteRule . %1 [R=301,L]