Potential problems? ( .htaccess and redirect to www )

Howdy, I’ve been requested to work out a way to redirect MySite.com to www.MySite.com. ( Search Engine Optimization )

I have used this method in the default .htaccess file.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^MySite.coml [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.MySite.com/$1 [L,R=301]

This caused 404’s ( within the ModX environment) before I commented out this line....

# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

Not knowing hardly anything about .htaccess I thought I’d post a quick thread, in case someone knows of a better way to achieve what I am trying to do, perhaps within the ModX configuration, or in the highly likely case that someone sees potential problems caused by my playing around where I probably shouldn’t be.

Comments about the worthwhileness of this endeavour in respect to SEO are also welcome.

If the purpose is just to put a "www." in front, then it’s pointless. If the purpose is because Google has a boatload of pages indexed already with the "www." then it makes sense.

From here.

"Normal" server configuration, as set up by most clueless hosting companies, allows you to access your site at either non-www or at www. In effect you have two identical sites. They fail to realise that search engines like Google see these two sites as being separate copies, not "one" site.

Search engines do not want to index the same content twice, so they try to filter one copy out. That means that your PageRank suffers. You have already seen that in effect, a site with domain.com/page.html with a PR3 and the "same" page at www.domain.com/page.html with a PR6.

If the redirect had been done properly, only www.domain.com/page.html would be listed and it might be PR7.

This is very easy to handle with .htaccess and still works with MODx rewrite rules...try placing something like this before the RewriteEngine On line in your .htaccess.

Quote from: OpenGeek at May 29, 2006, 03:54 PM

RedirectMatch permanent ^/mysite.com$ http://www.mysite.com

That doesn’t seem to want to work for me for some reason.

maybe this will help... http://articles.cranium-creations.com/2006/01/04/301-permanent-redirect