Make sure both WWW and non-WWW versions of your domain resolve...

[deleted984054565403]

Last summer, the FCC began aggressively advertising information about the Digital TV transition and sending people to a website for more information, even going as far as sponsoring a race car.

The problem is that the FCC told people to visit, simply, DTV.gov.

Go ahead -- type that into your browser:
http://dtv.gov/

It doesn't resolve, does it? Now, what happens if we try adding WWW to the beginning of the URL?

http://www.dtv.gov/

The page loads.

As a domainer and a developer, keep in mind that both the yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com should point to the same place. It certainly wouldn't be good to lose traffic you might otherwise have land on your domain or website!

If you're confused, talk to your web host or system administrator.

Steve

 

[Spade]

LoL. Perhaps thats why they are trying to push back the Digital Move.

 

[footodors]

I use godaddy hosting and when I create a domain, there's a checkbox for www.
Why wouldn't someone want www to resolve. I never got that.
It's not like it automatically redirects to non-www, then I could understand. Instead you get a non-resolving page.

 

[Ms Domainer]

I use godaddy hosting and when I create a domain, there's a checkbox for www.
Why wouldn't someone want www to resolve. I never got that.
It's not like it automatically redirects to non-www, then I could understand. Instead you get a non-resolving page.

*

When you set up a custom domain (e.g., blogger, changing CName), be sure to forward the domain to itself. Then it should resolve both ways. (But check it for yourself, though at some registrars, it takes a while to resolve; give it about 24 hours).

But when you set up the domain on the blogger end, do NOT check the box that asks if you want your URL to resolve without the www. For some reason, this disables everything.

You could also try not forwarding the domain to yourself and then checking the box on blogger's end, but I haven't tried this.

I tend to stick with what works for sure.

*

 

[mis_chiff]

I use godaddy hosting and when I create a domain, there's a checkbox for www.
.

I've never noticed that box. I need to pay more attention :gl:

Thanks Steve for your post regarding this,
I had issues with the non www and the www
the non www went to a Godaddy parking page with pop ups
and the www went to a Google parking page (AFD)

I couldn't figure it out, and neither could they! Everything was
how it was supposed to be.....

 

[cogger]

Also they should mod rewrite the htacess file for the domain.

RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\ReplaceWithYourSite.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.ReplaceWithYourSite.com/$1 [L,R=301]

 

[footodors]

I'm on a no www in domain kick now so I've been using this in htaccess:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

 

[tricolorro]

LoL. Perhaps thats why they are trying to push back the Digital Move.

The Republicans blocked the move to june.

Looks like Feb. 17 will be it!

 

[Skinny]

I don't get this either. This actually ticks me off because I see this a lot among many websites.

It's pretty simple to put in a 301 redirect. And even for non technical people . .. wouldn't they freak out if the non-www version of their name doesn't resolve.

I never got it.

Skinny

 

[owntype]

LOL, I have seen several Alexa top 5000 sites can't be visited without WWW.

 

[doggyowner]

What they are doing is bad for seo, splitting PR and link juice between www and non www. Someone should point out to them to do an URL canonicalization, using a mod rewrite, as l2ride55 and cogger pointed out.

 

[FathomJH]

Depending on what type of control panel you use for your server, whether virtual or dedicated, it depends upon how you add your domain. If you use the Simple Control Panel, when you add your domain name to the server, add "mysite.com" and leave out the www. When your site is added, the www will automatically resolve since www is actually a sub-domain of the actual domain.

 

[Kate]

There are so many sites that have that problem, and I'm talking about major websites
The worst is that some sites will still resolve witout the www. but return different contents like a 404 or 'under construction page' of some sort

 

[NathanJacob]

All you need to do is just create CNAME Record [Canonical Name ] so as to make sure that you don't lose traffic you might otherwise have land on your domain or website!

The most popular use of the CNAME Record type, is to provide access to a Web Server using both the standard www.yourdomain.com and domain.com (without the www). This is usually done by adding a CNAME-record for the www name pointing to the short name [while creating an A Record for the short name (without www)].