Why Do The W's Disappear?

**lemondime** · 10-25-2009, 07:58 PM

Hi There,

I just set up a Wordpress blog and uploaded to my shared hosting service provider and everything works fine, but when I point my browser to the url the three W's disappear and am just left with: http://example.com instead of http://www.example.com (Sorry, I don't know what the rules of posting actual urls are). I'm new to web development and would like to know why this is happening. I've consulted with my hosting provider and all they can tell me is that it is a Wordpress setting. Any insight is greatly appreciated!

**webwest** · 10-25-2009, 09:20 PM

In Wordpress, click on Settings. In the "WordPress address (URL)" and "Blog address (URL)" fields enter http://www.example.com

**rumsfo** · 10-26-2009, 05:47 AM

There is readme file comming with wordpress installation
read that first.
Good luck

**chrishirst** · 10-26-2009, 05:59 AM

It's called a "canonical redirect", and it is done to prevent search engines "seeing" duplicates sites on both versions and therefore "splitting" the linkage value.

**lemondime** · 10-26-2009, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by webwest

In Wordpress, click on Settings. In the "WordPress address (URL)" and "Blog address (URL)" fields enter http://www.example.com

Thanks for the help webwest!

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

It's called a "canonical redirect", and it is done to prevent search engines "seeing" duplicates sites on both versions and therefore "splitting" the linkage value.

Excellent! Thank you for the terminology chrishirst. I learned something new today

**cindyfowler** · 11-02-2009, 06:10 AM

i just know do 301redirect to deal with it.

**varul** · 11-19-2009, 05:50 AM

URL normalization is the better way to look all URLs same by the search engines.
everthing have been described here at RFC3986 (Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax)

**chrishirst** · 11-19-2009, 06:25 AM

URI "normalisation" is NOT what this thread is about.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt BTW

normalisation will happen with or without the "www" sub reference or any other "sub-domain" reference.

The www is simply a reference that may or may not deliver the same data as the hostname reference does.

Conventional standards ( which is where the term canonical comes into it) have determined that "www.hostname.tld" and "hostname.tld" would be expected to point to the same location and deliver the same data/content.