Redirect to external url adds external url to current url instead

Question

I'm using wampserver and I'm trying to redirect a visitor to an external url (which in turn will eventually send them back to another page on my drupal-site).

My site on wampserver is called localhost/testing and I use

drupal_goto(www.example.com, array(
  'external' => TRUE,
  'absolute' => TRUE,
  ));

However, the url I get redirected to is localhost/testing/www.example.com instead of www.example.com

Answer 1

You need whole URL like http(s)://www.example.com

Answer 2

Dont use file path like localhost/example.com/

please user localhost/examplecom/ or localhost/example-com/

rename the folder name example.com to example-com or examplecom