Question
Question about setting up both www and non-www domain names
I had a droplet set up running off an IP address and I needed to add a domain to it.
I added say ’www.foo.com’ using the domain control panel.
My client also wanted ‘foo.com’ to work and I was in a hurry, so I simply added that domain as well.
Now both work fine (there aren’t any redirections).
Reading back over the DNS documentation however, I see that I apparently shouldn’t have done it that way. The correct procedure is to have added the bare domain foo.com and then added the www version as an alias?
What are the advantages to doing it that way? What’s wrong with what I did? Have I set myself up for problems in the future?
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Adding www as an A-record and then adding www.yourdomain.com as an alias is a good way to go. Then you should decide which one the website should resolve to.
Once you have that, you can add something to your .htaccess to resolve www to the main domain. So when someone types in www.yourdomain.com they will end up at yourdomain.com
or vice versa.
From what I understand, choosing one over the other is preferable, as some website applications (such as WordPress) do not play well with multiple versions of a domain.
Also, I seem to remember Google not liking a website to have two domains, as it shows up as duplicate content…but do not quote me on that one.