To www. or not to www.

[Mike-mijen]

I was wondering. Does it make a difference to add www. to the links or not? Example: http://greenguysboard.com or http://www.greenguysboard.com
Just wondering.

[Cleo]

Do whatever you want but always do it the same.

[Simon]

You can use your .htaccess file to ensure that all pages load the way you want, with or without the "www." so all bookmarkers and spiders will see the address you want to favor.

Here's an example of what goes in the .htaccess file if you want to use the www...

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

That's all. And just edit as necessary if you want things the other way.

HTH

[cd34]

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

You might want to set an exclusion rather than an inclusion, otherwise http://somethingelse.domain.com/ would still fall through.

[Mike-mijen]

Cool. I just was not sure if made a difference in big skeem of things.

[Simon]

You might want to set an exclusion rather than an inclusion, otherwise http://somethingelse.domain.com/ would still fall through.

How would doing it that way affect subdomains that actually are in use on that domain?

[cd34]

if they are separate virtual hosts, it wouldn't change anything. But, if you have subdomains hitting the same virtual host, it would affect them.

[terry]

I believe SE's will treat them as seperate websites. With that said, duplicate content is something to consider. Add to that links to your site that either use the www or not - that will affect your page rank.
I say pick your fav and stick to it. Using a redirect in your htaccess (301) as mentioned is the way to go.

[Mike-mijen]

Cool Thanks