I'm having a problem with redirecting non-www to www on a Windows server (IIS 7.5). The control panel features are Parallels Panel (Plesk 11.5). I recently installed an SSL cert and my goal is to redirect both non-www (http://example.com) and www (http://www.example.com) to HTTPS (https://www.example.com).

Problem
To redirect, I am using a web.config file in my root directory with the following rewrite rules:

<rewrite>
 <rules>
 <rule name="Redirect to https" enabled="true" patternSyntax="Wildcard" stopProcessing="true">
 <match url="*" negate="false" />
 <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny">
 <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" />
 </conditions>
 <action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}{REQUEST_URI}" redirectType="Permanent" />
 </rule>
 </rules>
</rewrite>

This works fine if I type www.example.com into a browser. However, I get stuck in a redirect loop if I type example.com into the browser. Additionally, I have tried several input conditions in my web.config file like:

<add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="example\.com" />

But, that did not work. I also tried replacing the action URL {HTTP_HOST} setting with www.example.com to force everything to www, but that did not work either. I also tried removing the web.config file and added my own redirects to the top of my web pages. No luck. Nothing seems to work when typing example.com into the browser.

Parallels Panel (Plesk) Settings
In Plesk, I have changed the “Preferred Domain” feature to “None,” which goes against common wisdom since search engines will treat both URL versions (www and non-www) as URLs of different sites. However, this is solved by using a web.config file to force redirects, right?

Web Server Settings
This is an old site, so my default document is “index.asp"; this probably does not matter though.

Question:
Has anyone had similar experiences with browser redirect issues using a web.config under IIS, or do you have any suggestions?

My best guess is, there is a default configuration on the server that I am unaware of. The IIS Rewrite module is installed and working properly, and if I turn on or off the default document (index.asp), it still does not work. I tried communicating with the host provider, but their response was generic, and they did not want to provide specifics on URL redirects.