Comments on: Redirect Visitors From Non-WWW To WWW Version Of Your Website With .htaccess And mod_rewrite

By: George

George — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:45:40 +0000

Great tip. Apache rewrites are great, but sometimes a royal pain.

By: gakyi

gakyi — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 04:01:54 +0000

thank you for this www tip.

By: huckle

huckle — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:32:23 +0000

Sorry to post twice, I said tdl not tld in my previous post. Apologies.

By: huckle

huckle — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:30:54 +0000

Nicely explained. Too often are the mysteries of mod_rewrite overcomplicated by poor authorship. As for non-www or www, you contradict yourself by saying you prefer to use non-www in the article body yet in th title you say “From Non-WWW To WWW Version”. My own opinion is that the uninitiated and less geeky audience use www, but in time people work out they can be lazy.

I use firefox, so don’t even bother with the tdl if I can get away with it; most often google redirects you straight to the site you want anyway. If there isn’t one that matches you can just click it from the results page. Also helps with spelling mistakes as google is great at suggesting alternatives…

By: Kevinpan

Kevinpan — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 04:55:24 +0000

It seams good idea.
I’ll try it on my site.
thank you writer.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 21:53:22 +0000

It should show up either way, the WWW wouldn’t make a difference. I would have to see what you are doing.

By: Pudding

Pudding — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:46:11 +0000

I have a website, that i paid easyspace to put in a redirect service for my www. domain name (wish i hadn’t now after reading this!) However i was wondering, when you have a redirection like this, how you go about making your favicon show up in the address bar? My long domain, when accessed directly, shows it, but when i use the www. it doesn’t.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 18:54:22 +0000

Do you mean is there an advantage over using mod_rewrite to to redirect pages or PHP, or using a WWW and not using one in front of the domain? For the first, the advantage definately goes to mod_rewrite.

As for WWW versus non-WWW, it totally depends on the crowd that’s coming to your site and your personal preference. Obviously you should force a user one way or the other, because I notice that search engines and even when users bookmark your site in social bookmarking places, they do a combination of: using the WWW, not using the WWW, using a trailing slash after directories, and not using trailing slashes.

So pick two options and stick with them. Either force them to a WWW version or don’t. Either force a trailing slash or don’t.

You would think that most people don’t type the WWW, but I would beg to differ. We’re not most people. People like my parents type the WWW, and I actually don’t type the WWW either, but I do the shortcut Ctrl + Enter and that automatically ads a WWW and COM before/after whatever word you type in the address bar.

By: Josh Kaufman

Josh Kaufman — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 15:28:46 +0000

Is there an advantage or disadvantage either way or just a personal preference? I just registered a new domain for a new project I am starting and I am trying to figure out which way to go.

My first impression is that you want everything redirected to Non-WWW just because many people don’t type if WWW. I know if i wanted to visit divspace i would simple type in ‘divspace.com’

By: Adan

Adan — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:24:18 +0000

Is there any special techniques that can be used to optimize a wordpress blog on my server for SEO. One issue I see is no way to change the title tags on each page, where it seems to take the blog name for the home page.
I have several hundred 600+ inbound links.
I have pinged Technorati manually and used pingoat as well as pingomatic every time I add a new blog.
There is plenty of content, about 30 articles.
What else can I do? What else should I do to optimize my blog?