Server Hosting (Control Panel) Issue - www.www

[paulbeckett]

Hi all

My website server host has an issue with their Control Panel that they are struggling with and at the moment they can provide no clear and definite resolution. Therefore I would really value the opinion of the forum.

My site is appearing with the rogue url www.www.kjbeckett [.]com. It will show no mater how many www.www.www.www. appear before the .kjbeckett.com.

This is a definite server issue and my hosts have fedback this:

We've investigated and no-one has ever seen this before, so we are coming to the conclusion it is a one off situation.

On your control panel, under DNS configuration there are 2 A records set up, one is without www and the other is a wildcard *.

If you choose to, you could replace the wildcard entry with www - thus making the site only ever respond to www.

We offer this as a suggestion, it is your decision whether to do it.

I'm concerened by this response. It seems very uncertain and vaugue considering it comes from the hosts themselves ... Becuase I am not an expert on servers/hosting I am unable to make a full decision on this without more information.

Any change that I make needs to allow the site to appear when kjbeckett.com or www.kjbeckett.com or http://www.kjbeckett.com is entered into the url bar within the browser.

Likewise we wouldn't want any change to impact the way Google crawls and indexes our existing (real - www.kjbeckett.com) site or how any other existing links hit our site.

Does anyone have any opinion regarding how the www.www issue might be resolved at low risk?

Paul

[swardell]

Hi Paul

As you have a DNS entry for the wildcard (*) then your web site will respond to anything before the domain and tld, try

anyoldthingorother dot kjbeckett dot com

or

one dot two dot three dot four dot kjbeckett dot com

to see what I mean

There is nothing wrong as such with this but if you only want your web site to respond to www.domain.com and domain.com then drop the wildcard entry and set up something like an A record to point domain.com to your IP address and then a CNAME to point www.domain.com to domain.com, which is a fairly typical way of doing it)

[paulbeckett]

if you only want your web site to respond to www.domain.com and domain.com then drop the wildcard entry and set up something like an A record to point domain.com to your IP address and then a CNAME to point www.domain.com to domain.com, which is a fairly typical way of doing it)

Thanks... I will have a chat with Pinbrook and see if they understand this!

Seeing that the we seem to have had a DNS entry for the wildcard (*) for sometime, is there any risk of changing it could impact current search engine indexing to our site?

I'm struggling to understand if there is any risk to the current www.kjbeckett.com site (in terms of negative impact on current search engine indexing).

Paul

[leehack]

I'm struggling to understand if there is any risk to the current www.kjbeckett.com site (in terms of negative impact on current search engine indexing).

Will you leave it as it is if there are adverse effects then? Surely you need to do the change whatever the consequences and then mop up?

[paulbeckett]

Will you leave it as it is if there are adverse effects then? Surely you need to do the change whatever the consequences and then mop up?

No, it needs to go becuase it is awful. However I would prefer to proactively manage the consequences (if possible).

Can anyone see any see any potential "clangers" by doing this change (e.g. removing the widcard etc.)?

[Duncan Rounding]

You don't need the wildcard so long as you can still resolve kjbeckett.com and www.kjbeckett.com.

I'd refer Steve's comment above to Pinbrook and see if they can set that up for you.

There's nothing you can do with the Google results www.www etc - they will die as soon as it doesn't resolve. At the moment, strange as it seems, it may be bringing you more traffic with the additional entry.

[Guidepost]

Hi,

My site (also hosted with Pinbrook) will also appear with anything before the guidepost.uk.com, but I have not seen any evidence of "incorrect" addresses appearing in search results - is it still better to remove the wildcard entry?

Thanks,
Rosalyn

[Mike Hughes]

The problem seems to be a very rare occurence.

I suspect there won't be a problem unless something kicks it off. Most likely a link with an extra www. by mistake.

Mike

[pinbrook]

If any of our clients are concerned please contact us via our support desk.

[swardell]

Just to add that having a wild card can be very useful and is perfectly normal, it really helps make sure that people who type ww. or wwww. or mobile. or any other leading text will find your site and not a server not found error. The only way the www.www can have gotten into the wild is that it must have been used in link or entry to google. Did you ever use a submission tool that automagically added the www to the domain even though you typed it in? have seen a few web pages that have done that before!

[Mike Hughes]

Presumably the solution to this then is in two stages.

1. Keep the dns wildcard to ensure vistors get to your site.

2. Add a mod_rewrite to your htaccess file to ensure vistors / search engines arrive at the correct url.

I'm no expert in mod_rewrite so someone will need to confirm this but I would think something like this will work:

RewriteEngine on
Rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.kjbeckett\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.kjbeckett.com/$1 [R=301,L]

What this does.

Line 1: Tells apache to start using the mod_rewrite engine.

Line 2: Tells mod_rewrite to look in the url for the case that doesn't (!) begin with (^) www.kjbeckett.com. The slashes in front of the periods are just escape characters for them.

Line 3: Tells mod_rewrite what to do if the rule is met. In this case do a 301 permanent redirect to www.kjbeckett.com keeping the arguments ($1).

Mike

[paulbeckett]

Hi Steve

Did you ever use a submission tool that automagically added the www to the domain even though you typed it in? have seen a few web pages that have done that before!

We've never used a submission tool and I've checked our site and I can't find the link there. But we have so many sites linking to us from various places I'm sure someone has mistakenly just added extra www. which Google has crawled.

I think it is just a co-incidence that we have this error in the Control Panel and a rogue link that points to the rogue site. As soon as the Control Panel issue is resolved all will be cool!

Hi Mike

Presumably the solution to this then is in two stages.

1. Keep the dns wildcard to ensure vistors get to your site.

2. Add a mod_rewrite to your htaccess file to ensure vistors / search engines arrive at the correct url.

Thanks for your solution. I'm going to contact Pinbrook to confirm how they will proceed. They have offered a different solution altlhough I think yours may add some value.

Because I lack the technical knowledge I'm not quite sure how to proceed. I will speak to Pinbrook and then report back to the forum to help others who might want to resolve the problem before they get indexed by Google too!

I think the problem is a rare occurrence but personally, I would suggest other sites get it resolved proactively before they have Google issues. All it will take is one rogue link from anywhere on the web and Google will start indexing.

Paul