Duplicate page issue

[mythandmagic]

Hi, hope somebody can help.

ive been advised on a site that the www. and the non www. should point to the same page.

ie...thisdomainname.com should re-direct to www.thisdomainname.com

How do i achieve this ?

Also, the page www.thisdomainname.com and www.thisdomainname.com/index are the same page.

What do i do about this ?

(note: domains are made up and not linking to actual site)

[Chunkford]

Look up .htaccess and google webmaster tools

[mythandmagic]

ok, this needs dumbing down a bit for me ?

how can google webmaster tools help ?

[Chunkford]

You use Google Webmaster Tools when Google see's both www and non www. pages. (Google treats them as separate sites). You can then tell Google how you want it to treat them. See this link for more info - http://www.google.com/support/webmas...nswer=139066#1
This method is used to help with search engine placements, but doesn't stop it from happening. That's where the .htaccess file comes in. Here's a link some Google results on the subject - http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=.ht...ww+and+non+www

Hope this helps
Paul

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

A search of the forum should bring up several relating threads for directing non-www urls to www urls

We add the following into our .htaccess file

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

There are several varations of this code but all basically do the same thing.



In the 'Settings' tab of 'Site Configuration' in Google Webmaster Tools you can tell Google if you would prefer URLs in search results to be displayed with ot without the 'www'.

The options are:
Don't set a preferred domain
Display URLs as www.mysite.co.uk
Display URLs as mysite.co.uk

[mythandmagic]

ok, so i use the following in a .htaccess file.

I used notepad to create a .htaccess file with the code in below (using my domain) but it wont let me save it to the public_html or the root...it just disappears ??

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.yoursite.com/ [R=301,L]

[Chunkford]

ok, so i use the following in a .htaccess file.

I used notepad to create a .htaccess file with the code in below (using my domain) but it wont let me save it to the public_html or the root...it just disappears ??

I've had this happen before. You will need to contact your hosting provider and ask them to display the .htacess files for you.

[meden]

ok, so i use the following in a .htaccess file.

I used notepad to create a .htaccess file with the code in below (using my domain) but it wont let me save it to the public_html or the root...it just disappears ??

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.yoursite.com/ [R=301,L]

Have you checked to see if it has uploaded to your site root and is just being hidden by your server? Try going to your site without using the www and see if the address gets rewritten in your browser - if it does then your .htaccess works and job done

[mythandmagic]

yes, it was my ftp upload hiding it.

Can somebody tell me if that .htaccess is correct ?

so the non www goes to the www.

and also, if anyone uses the /index.html it redirects to the main domain.

[meden]

Nope, it's not working

This is one of mine so you could use it as a template:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^seaspraytraining.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.seeaspraytraining.com/$1 [r=301,nc]
rewritecond %{http_host} ^seaspraytraining.co.uk [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.seeaspraytraining.com/$1 [r=301,nc]
rewritecond %{http_host} www.seeaspraytraining.co.uk [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.seeaspraytraining.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

It doesn't address your index.html issue but it should get you started

[pinbrook]

tell us what is in your htaccess file... and where you put it.

[meden]

The .htaccess he's used is quoted in my post Jo (I suspect the 'L' after the '301' may be the source of the problem- that or the file is in the acatalog directory of course)

[Mike Hughes]

Do you not need to escape the period in the rewrite condition for .com , .co.uk, etc?

i.e.

rewritecond %{http_host} ^seaspraytraining\.com [nc]

Mike

Edit: OK. Answered myself. The period matches any single character so it will work without the escape.

[meden]

No, I don't think so - I'm not a regex expert but this seems to work on the site anyway