apparently I'm an idiot- a www issue.

[Scott]

I like to think I'm of at least average intelligence.  Then I come across simple things I should be doing to make my site better, try to do them, and fail.  

people can't access my site if they don't put the www. in the address bar.  I thought I fixed that a long time ago.  I never type them in on my browser and I'm fine, but apparently I didn't actually accomplish anything.

I didn't find a tutorial on this.  Can someone point me to a link please?

[Eric Suesz]

Hey, Scott. It appears to be working okay for me. Have you set up a CNAME for your site? It looks like you do. 

[Scott]

using my personal url is fine, but only if I have the www in front.  

I do have a CNAME, could I have screwed up there?

[Eric Suesz]

I am able to access both of these without any trouble: 

hypnothoughts.com

www.hypnothoughts.com

Both lead me to http://www.hypnothoughts.com/

?

[Scott]

It depends on the browser.

me and some other people get this:

[Phil McCluskey]

Some browsers automatically try www if the www-less version doesn't work and vice versa. Scott, it seems like you don't have an A Record for your domain, just a CNAME for www. You should just be able to add an A Record.

[Scott]

Hi Phil-

I did all that and it worked, thanks.  I also got the following message today from a member (who brought this to my attention last week).

Is he right about this, and if so, what the hell do I do?

have I opened a can of worms here?  I thought this was a simple redirect.

Thanks again,

Scott

Good morning. I see you've addressed the non www for HypnoThoughts. But, you've "switched" to non www vs. what you've been getting indexed under which iswww.hypnothoughts.com. You're probably going to see a noticeable decrease in search engine traffic while the search engines recalculate the change - that's a BIG one. Unfortunately this is probably going to have some long term effects since most of your links are probably pointing to www.hypnothoughts.com and nothttp://hypnothoughts.com/.

 

It appears that Google is already picking up the non www change. But, you've got other issues going on that need to get addressed promptly...

 

https://www.hypnothoughts.com/groups

 

 

Your SSL is for www.hypnothoughts.com and doesn't cover the non www version, or at least that is what I think is happening. Usually SSLs are for a specific domain including the hostname e.g. www.

 

You have two options right now. One, get your server admins to fix the non www so it goes to www as soon as possible. Then you'll need to make sure there is a 301 Permanent Redirect in place for all non www requests to www. That should take care of everything and get you back on the right track. It's only been a few days since the change I believe and nipping it in the bud now is required. If you don't, you're going to have a lot of fragmented equity within the site and this is NOT a good thing. :(