Showing posts with label Google Webmaster Tools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google Webmaster Tools. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

How to get www in front of your URL

So my website, www.moderncurio.com is missing the "www" in front of it's name. Apparently it's a common occurrence that will 15 minutes to fix and weeks to resolve.

The solution is a two part fix. The first leg involves setting up Google Webmaster Tools. After you verify your sites (both the www and non-www). Go to Site Configuration > Settings > Preferred Domain and set it to "Display URLs as www.example.com"

Part two of the solution is to set up a 301 redirect and you can do that by adding the code below to your .htaccess file:

# non-www to www
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]


To learn more, read up on more on 301 redirects.

After all this, it'll take a while for google webmaster tools to take effect. Apparently, it takes weeks for Google Webmaster Tools Blog to configure itself. You can learn more about the process at the tools.

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NOTE: WORDPRESS USERS:
For WordPress Users, you will also need to change a setting in wordpress general settings and set your preferred URLs to have www.