www and no www

[JYM]

Hello

I don't mean to bring up the topic of http://www.domain.com versus http://domain.com but my domain doesn't work without the www. It is registered here on namepros and I haven't done anything with it aside from change the nameservers. One day...the non-www just stopped working. Could it have to do with a missing htaccess file?

 

[RJ]

Whoever operates the nameservers you're using, your hosting provider most likely, needs to make sure there are DNS records for both with and without www.

 

[harkster]

Yes. Some servers are not setup to do the redirect. It is also a good practice to use the .htaccess to make the Search Engines happy as they will always see the www address.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.ext [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.ext/$1 [L,R=301]

Replace domain.ext with your domain name.

Whoever operates the nameservers you're using, your hosting provider most likely, needs to make sure there are DNS records for both with and without www.

Is this not a function of the Apache server settings???

 

[JYM]

Ah, so it was the host all along. That seems right, since it stopped working properly once I switched. Richard, thanks for the htaccess code.

I worried about this for weeks and then I had the great idea of seeking help from NamePros and it's solved within 10 minutes.

 

[EbookLover]

Personally, if I ever came accross a host that is like this, I would leave them. Who knows what other quirks they have.

I have seen many sites over the years that only work with the "WWW" part in the URL. It's a terribly bad thing from a marketing standpoint.

 

[ammo]

Personally, if I ever came accross a host that is like this, I would leave them. Who knows what other quirks they have.

I have seen many sites over the years that only work with the "WWW" part in the URL. It's a terribly bad thing from a marketing standpoint.

I also have never come across such a host, it seems a bit odd. I think Ebook maybe right, could be very bad from a marketing point of view, just keep it in mind.