111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

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theoclymenus
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111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by theoclymenus » Fri Nov 30, 2007 2:38 am

Full title: "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name and why it matters"

Description
Read information on the No-WWW website to learn why it's important to not
use the WWW portion of a domain name.

Explain how to use an .htaccess redirect command to redirect all
http://www.example.com traffic to example.com using this code (instructing the
reader to replace example.com with their domain name.)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^example.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Note: This .htaccess method of redirection requires Apache Mod-Rewrite
module enabled.

Finally, example how to define 'preferred domain' using Google Web Master
Tools and why that matters.
I am a senior at my local public high school. I have taken computer related classes throughout my high school career and have completed the AP Computer Science curriculum (A and AB). While I do meet the requirements for helping out with coding related tasks, I chose to start with this simple yet interesting task because this is my first time contributing to a large open source project. I found this interesting because I do not know how to complete the task described above but would like to learn how to do this. I hope to accomplish this quickly and move on to other more challenging tasks. I have used a lot of things created by the open source community and I am glad to finally have the opportunity to give something back.

I do not have any questions because this task is very straightforward.


Google Task
[me=AmyStephen]Changed subject slightly for sorting all threads to match against Google resource  :)[/me]
Last edited by AmyStephen on Wed Dec 19, 2007 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by AmyStephen » Fri Nov 30, 2007 2:46 am

Very cool, theoclymenus! Welcome to Joomla! We are so pleased that you are willing to contribute to our community. This information will be helpful to people all over the world, so your efforts will be put to good service.

Do not hesitate to ask questions and request feedback from the community. We are here to help you be successful with your task.

Good luck with the contest!
Amy :)

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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by theoclymenus » Sat Dec 01, 2007 7:57 pm

I believe that

Code: Select all

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^example.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [r=301,nc]
should be replaced with

Code: Select all

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
because we must
redirect all http://www.example.com traffic to example.com
(Class B) not redirect example.com to http://www.example.com (Class A).

Was the issue incorrect? Do you want Class A compliance instead?


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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by alledia » Tue Dec 11, 2007 5:07 pm

I'd be happy to help / review / mentor this project if needed.
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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by AmyStephen » Wed Dec 12, 2007 6:47 am

Excellent, Steve, thanks so very much!

It looks like there is an unanswered question in post 2 - if you could help with that, it would be very much appreciated.

theoclymenus - Steve is *the* SEO expert in all of Joomla! land, and also, a really nice guy. You are in good hands.

If you would please update us on your project status, it would be appreciated. We would like contestants to check in with us, every few days, and apprise us of your status and see if we can help out.

Now that you have Steve in your court, you are in very good hands!

Thanks!
Amy :)

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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by alledia » Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:46 pm

Thanks Amy, for the intro and kind words

Hi theoclymenus

Please feel free to PM with any questions or post what you have here.
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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by theoclymenus » Sun Dec 16, 2007 4:22 pm

Thank you alledia, I will post the completed work for review shortly. I apologize for the delay in replying.

----EDIT----
File has been attached for review.
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Last edited by theoclymenus on Sun Dec 16, 2007 5:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by AmyStephen » Sun Dec 16, 2007 7:40 pm

Looks good to me - very straightforward, to the point, easy to understand and do. I would add a sentence that doing this can be helpful to your Google Page Rank (GPR), as well.

Will wait to hear Steve's feedback, as well.

Thanks!
Amy :)

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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by theoclymenus » Sun Dec 16, 2007 8:02 pm

modified the document to mention how the preferred domain affects the Google Page Rank and added a note telling the reader that they should replace "example.com" with their domain name.

----EDIT-----
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Last edited by theoclymenus on Sun Dec 16, 2007 8:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by alledia » Sun Dec 16, 2007 8:33 pm

Hi theoclymenus

Good work :)

Some suggestions:

1) Mostly you've written very clearly, but it might be better (as this is a newbie guide) to write the first paragraph more simply and with more explanation. I'm not quite sure I understood the "why?"
This post has some useful ideas: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonicalization-update/

2) Same with the next part where you say "This method requires Apache Mod-Rewrite module enabled." Can newbies easily check this?

3) For what its worth ... Google understands the redirect well but Yahoo and MSN often ignore this and keep indexing the non-www version
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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by trombonechamp » Sun Dec 16, 2007 8:36 pm

The first letter is in Halvetica, the rest is in Times!

(You also might want to capitalize the n in "note:")


I have a question.  Wouldn't it just be easier to go to your domain host and make WWW a CNAME redirecting to your non-www'ed site?

Great work!
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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by theoclymenus » Mon Dec 17, 2007 12:10 am

ok, incorporated the suggested changes. Thank you for your help so far.
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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by alledia » Mon Dec 17, 2007 12:19 am

Thanks theoclymenus

Great job!

Just two more things from me then I'll turn you over to Amy:

1) The first section still seems too technical for a noobie guide. Words such as protocol, prepends, SMTP, subdomain and so require quite a bit of web knowledge.

Maybe rename your section "Why remove “WWW” from your Domain Name?" to "Technical reasons why you should remove “WWW” from your Domain Name" .

Then add a brief introduction without any technical language (just words of one syllable :) )

2) "In addition, defining a preferred domain can be helpful to your Google Page Rank." Why?

... because you won't have two copies of the same page indexed. Each page is only able to pass a fixed amount of PR. If it is passing PR to both the non-www and www versions of your domain, both pages will only get half the correct amount. If the www redirects to the the non-www, the non-www will get all the PR.
Last edited by alledia on Mon Dec 17, 2007 12:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by theoclymenus » Mon Dec 17, 2007 1:43 am

alledia, thanks for your help. I made the necessary adjustments and hope this what you envisioned.
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Last edited by theoclymenus on Mon Dec 17, 2007 1:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by alledia » Mon Dec 17, 2007 2:19 pm

Great work - theoclymenus.

Theres a couple of typos you need to fix (necesssay, convient) but otherwise I'll turn you over to Amy and others for feedback.
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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by AmyStephen » Mon Dec 17, 2007 2:32 pm

Great, thanks much, Steve!

Theoclymenus - when you have those typos fixed, let us know and we'll get this wrapped up!

Amy :)


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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by theoclymenus » Mon Dec 17, 2007 8:05 pm

Typos have been fixed :) Please mark as "Solved"
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Last edited by theoclymenus on Mon Dec 17, 2007 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by AmyStephen » Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:00 pm

url --> URL

Not certain why this is included? I would remove it for clarity.
A more technical explanation is that the “WWW”  is an abbreviation for “World Wide Web”, a complete set of documents residing on all Internet servers that use the HTTP protocol. All popular Web browsers assume the HTTP protocol. The browser software prepends the 'http://' onto the requested URL and automatically connects to the HTTP server on port 80.
Slight mod to next sentence:
Web servers should display their pages though the main domain name, (insert) i.e., www, (end insert) unless a particular subdomain is required; the use of the www subdomain is simply redundant.
Change [email protected] to [email protected] (example.com is the WC3 reserved domain name for examples about domains.)

Change: How do you do this? to: How do you remove "WWW" from your domain name?

Change: Create this file if it does not exist.  To: If you do not have an .htaccess file, rename the htaccess.txt delivered with Joomla! to .htaccess

Remove: If you do not have this access, simply continue.

Add this statement after the error code 500 line: If your website is hosted and you have problems, talk to your web host about your Apache configuration and ask if mod_rewrite capability is enabled.

I'll look for your changes!

Amy :)

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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by theoclymenus » Tue Dec 18, 2007 9:24 pm

Thank you for all your help and support. Changes have been made. :)
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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by AmyStephen » Wed Dec 19, 2007 6:23 am

Remove their:
Web servers display their pages though the main domain

Space after file:
file(/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf)

Space after Rank:
Google Page Rank(GPR)

Really good - with these three changes, I accept as complete.

Thanks!
Amy :)

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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by theoclymenus » Wed Dec 19, 2007 11:15 am

Done :)
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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by ianmac » Wed Dec 19, 2007 3:07 pm

I approve.

This thread will be marked "Solved." Please post your work to your
Google Task page. After you have done so, we will close the task and
you will be free to choose another task, if you desire.

Ian

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Re: 111 - Create a document entitled "How to remove "WWW" from your Domain Name

Post by theoclymenus » Wed Dec 19, 2007 8:07 pm

ok, thank you, the work has been posted.


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