Yes, use non-www.
http://www.domain.com will redirect seamlessly to domain.com, and that’s fine 🙂
Thanks – but our customer insists that the primary domain starts wit www. (and is not redirected).
Is there a chance to get this solved?
I “played” with the database and removed some “www.” but I’m not quite sure which long term effects this may has.
Insists is a funny word. This is the point where you need to push back on your client and tell them they’re not doing best practices online. After all, they hired you to do the right thing.
You could possibly manually edit the site URLs, but I wouldn’t recommend it, and really part of the reason this is being daft for you is your server.
Or they can use subfolders, not subdomains, which are perfectly equal in SEO/Google’s eyes.
But I can understand my customer, that he thinks that most people are used to the www. in front of the domain.
And I hardly visit domains starting without www. – it’s a “WordPress thing”.
I’m really wondering why my case seems to be exotic – It should be the default.
An okay explaination on Server Address, go to Network Details.
But if you use cPanel Fantastico or Direct Admin WP Install, they will give you options to choose the WP address install.
It’s not exotic, it’s just that WordPress Multisite works best if you don’t have the www.
I strongly dis-recommend it. To the point that I may do an ‘I told you so’ dance later if your site breaks :/
The www works most of the time, but when it breaks, it breaks big time, and it’s not consistant and I do not know why.
Hi,
I come from the other side. I just trasfered a site to a multisite subsite and forgot to ommit the WWW. I setup my subdomain wordpress multisite install with: define(‘DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE’, ‘www.mymuwebsite.com’);
I’m afraid it will break in the future. So I’m thinking about removing the WWW from the mainsite.
But what steps should I take?
I have a rather big database so I would like to do it directly in the database (I know it’s risky, but i’ll backup). Í was thinking about the following steps:
A.Change the domain and absolute path in in mySQL database by removing the WWW:
1. Options table fields siteurl
2. options table field home
3. metasite table field siteurl.
B.Change the line define( ‘DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE’ to without a WWW
I’m I forgettings something or do you have a better approach for removing the WWW?
You should keep to your own topic please 🙂
I think it is a major drawback that you:
a) Can’t easily change the (default) network root URL, and
b) Keep the primary blog URL separate from the network root URL
Domain mapping (different from the network root domain) should also be a default function.
Since there are only a hand full database entries concerning the URLs it shouldn’t be to hard to write a best practice or even develop a plug in.
We would do the development work if someone supports us with the best practice to change the database.
a) Can’t easily change the (default) network root URL, and
Yes, it is a major drawback. Drives me nuts, but I can’t see a way to fix it :/
b) Keep the primary blog URL separate from the network root URL
I’m not sure what you mean here…
Domain mapping (different from the network root domain) should also be a default function.
Oddly I disagree, only because it’s not used by the majority. yet. 🙂
