With www or without..Please help

[snakes1100]

your welcome

[kronnos]

Originally Posted by nexialys

it's not a preference actually (like if the web was based on personal preferences)

Google is checking first if a mysite.com exists... if not, www.mysite.com is checked out and then google say it's impossible to find.

your server is supposed to manage www. calls, so it redirect to your site in the /public_html/ path. if you have no /www/ ALIAS directory below your /public_html/, ou can ask your webmaster to make one... (it's simply a alias of the /public_html/ path!)

.htaccess files are not handling the situation very well, just replacing the www. but that cause a sub-domain to be used and your site may have cookies problems if it is done.

Ahha, so google searched for the non-www version first? So maybe they prefer the non-www version?

Anyway, what exactly should i ask my host to do to make the changes so I do not have to use the htaccess to make it non-www or www version?

Would they understand what im talking about if I ask them "the alias should be setup via apache, and then symlink the www dir to the public_html directory"? Lol, because i have no idea what that means. Also, how to I ask to make it non-www or www in the alias?

Thank You

[motowebmaster]

I force the 'www' via an apache directive, but it also helps to include it in your vb general settings under the Site Name / URL / Contact Details section.

Also check your templates and ensure that they, and anything else you add to your site, uses the same URL. Sometimes custom templates are a problem.

It's possible to do it via .htaccess, but you might have to remember to re-edit it in the future if you did an upgrade.

[TECK]

Does Google display the www?
I think they are worth to have their setup trusted...

google will check the www. after the domain because of the old technique... but if i remember the writings in the InternetII (which is not the Web 2.0), the www. will be dropped in the next years because it indicate purely that we're on the web and nobody ever use if for it's real purpose anymore...

btw, kronnos, you have it right with the simlink... alias is simlink.

[Solo Drakban]

www is unnecessary, but why not just support both? Just set the cookies via the admincp to set for your entire domain and then you can use www, not use www or use fuzzynavel. as the hostname.

[motowebmaster]

I agree that www may become considered needless in coming years, but it helps me separate an actual website from it's supporting resources.

The reason why you wouldn't want to support both is that search engines may index the same page twice, with and without the www, which affects the importance/relevancy of the respective content. For example, a page that provides how-to information may compete with an alternative URL from your site elsewhere in the same search engine. If you force the URL (either way), then it is likely to be indexed with one URL and all of the traffic results go to the single respective URL.