Tech ArticlesIf you are running your own domain, there's a good chance users can access it using more than one URL. For example, one domain is often linkable using yourdomain.tld, www.yourdomain.tld, yourdomain.yourhost.tld, an IP address, and so on.
Why, you may ask, could this be a problem?
If your domain allows people to log in for various features, using a different domain might log them out unintentionally. If you are trying to track your web traffic, different domains might skew some of your statistics, particularly referrer stats. Search engines are also a problem, as you can end up with the same page linked multiple times with different URLs.
The good news is that on an Apache server, .htaccess can be used to correct this. You can rewrite (no, this isn't forwarding) all domains that are equivalent to your preferred domain so that they all end up using the same URL. It doesn't matter which you choose, but personally, I like to encourage people to quit typing the obligatory and redundant “www.” at the start of my domains.
Just add this little snippet of code to your root .htaccess file to rewrite all domains to yourdomain.tld.
# Change to the preferred domain
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yourdomain\.tld
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.tld/$1 [R=301,L]
You spent plenty of money to get a memorable domain name. Why take the chance that someone will not be seeing it?
Rollie Hawk is a consultant, web publisher, online personality, magazine writer, web developer, network administrator, teacher, husband and father residing in southern Illinois. He graduated in 2002 from Southern Illinois University, earning his BS majoring in math with a minor in chemistry.