[How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects

change this:

Code:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^makeuptalk\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.makeuptalk.com/$1 [L,R=301]

to

Code:

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

effectively this does the same thing.

The way you have it, it says If it is makeuptalk.com go to Makeup Talk | MakeupTalk is makeup, beauty, skin care, beauty product reviews, beauty products, eyemakeup, eye makeup, hair care, talk and gossip for women

the new way says
if it's NOT Makeup Talk | MakeupTalk is makeup, beauty, skin care, beauty product reviews, beauty products, eyemakeup, eye makeup, hair care, talk and gossip for women go to Makeup Talk | MakeupTalk is makeup, beauty, skin care, beauty product reviews, beauty products, eyemakeup, eye makeup, hair care, talk and gossip for women

This will cover EVERYthing else, such as stray subdomains, any parked domains, etc etc.

Thank you very much!

What about :

Also, while in Google Webmaster tools, I tried to set the "Display URLs as www.makeuptalk.com " but it keeps saying "Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http://makeuptalk.com/. Please verify http://makeuptalk.com/."

I thought I verified it over a year ago when Ifirst started using GWT, but now it says that. How do I verify it?

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

change this:

Code:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^makeuptalk\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.makeuptalk.com/$1 [L,R=301]

to

Code:

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

effectively this does the same thing.

The way you have it, it says If it is makeuptalk.com go to Makeup Talk | MakeupTalk is makeup, beauty, skin care, beauty product reviews, beauty products, eyemakeup, eye makeup, hair care, talk and gossip for women

the new way says
if it's NOT Makeup Talk | MakeupTalk is makeup, beauty, skin care, beauty product reviews, beauty products, eyemakeup, eye makeup, hair care, talk and gossip for women go to Makeup Talk | MakeupTalk is makeup, beauty, skin care, beauty product reviews, beauty products, eyemakeup, eye makeup, hair care, talk and gossip for women

This will cover EVERYthing else, such as stray subdomains, any parked domains, etc etc.

You should already have a meta tag or html file on your server. Just go through the priocess and verify the site. its liekly the same verification code.

Yes, I verified it both ways, HTML file and meta-tag. It says it's verfiied and everything. But, It still says this when I try to change the Preferred domain from "dont set a preferred domain" to the Makeup Talk | MakeupTalk is makeup, beauty, skin care, beauty product reviews, beauty products, eyemakeup, eye makeup, hair care, talk and gossip for women domain.

Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own Makeup Talk | MakeupTalk is makeup, beauty, skin care, beauty product reviews, beauty products, eyemakeup, eye makeup, hair care, talk and gossip for women. Please verify Makeup Talk | MakeupTalk is makeup, beauty, skin care, beauty product reviews, beauty products, eyemakeup, eye makeup, hair care, talk and gossip for women.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

You should already have a meta tag or html file on your server. Just go through the priocess and verify the site. its liekly the same verification code.

Click through to the verify process. it should be able to find it.

Take a look at my attached image.

That says that you are verified.

That's correct. LOL But, like I said.... It still says this when I try to change the Preferred domain from "dont set a preferred domain" to be the www. makeuptalk.com. Understand?

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

That says that you are verified.

Originally Posted by Kihon

That's correct. LOL But, like I said.... It still says this when I try to change the Preferred domain from "dont set a preferred domain" to be the www. makeuptalk.com. Understand?

With Google you have to verify ownership of both www. and non-www. separately the screenshot shows that the www. is verified but you need to add the domain to your records again without the www. and then verify that.

Note the message that google stated.

Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http://makeuptalk.com/. Please verify http://makeuptalk.com/."

tried it. It works but if I want to log in it doesn't work.

Make sure your htaccess contents (either with or without www's) matches your vboptions -> site url setting. If you have mix-matched www's here, you will never login.

Also, you may want to set your cookie domain to be .yourdomain.com (note the prefix dot). This will allow cookies to be on ALL subdomains of your site (yes, www is a subdomain).

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

Make sure your htaccess contents (either with or without www's) matches your vboptions -> site url setting. If you have mix-matched www's here, you will never login.

Also, you may want to set your cookie domain to be .yourdomain.com (note the prefix dot). This will allow cookies to be on ALL subdomains of your site (yes, www is a subdomain).

It works. Great thanks.

I have a forum ecoforumz.com I created a while ago it was supposed to be an eco, green, global warming type of a forum but turned into an ebike forum. I have since purchased ebikeforum.com and ebikeforums.com which better describes the forum. I would like to start using ebikeforum.com as the default domain but still want my old URL's to work.

I want people to be able to use all of the below to get to my site.

ecoforumz.com
www.ecoforumz.com
ebikeforum.com
www.ebikeforum.com
ebikeforums.com
www.ebikeforums.com

I am wondering if it is better to 301 redirect everything to ebikeforum.com

Or

make it so they see any of the above domains in the URL. For example...

ecoforumz.com/electric-bike-scooter/
www.ecoforumz.com/electric-bike-scooter/
ebikeforum.com/electric-bike-scooter/
www.ebikeforum.com/electric-bike-scooter/
ebikeforums.com/electric-bike-scooter/
www.ebikeforums.com/electric-bike-scooter/

I am not really on top of any search engines so I am not worried about using a new domain name. I do have alot of links to my site and people that use direct links to get to my site. So it is very important that my old URL's still work.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

vbseo is designed to work on ONE domain and one domain only and is optimial for SEO.

If you want multiple domains to access, you should park the extra domains and 301 them to your REAL domain only.

I've added this, and so many variations of it, but I've never found a version that efficiently redirects ALL www. versions of my domain to the non-www version. For example, typing :

HTML Code:

http://www.lyricalthreatz.com

will redirect to:

HTML Code:

http://lyricalthreatz.com

but typing:

HTML Code:

http://www.lyricalthreatz.com/forums/

will not redirect.