Another good question from our mailbag

“The www seemed to have disappeared from my site when I visit it. I always use www in my links but when I go to my site it loads without the www in it.”

Before I go into the likely fix, a little back story so you understand the underlying issue. Normally all sites are accessible using either www or without. However for SEO purposes, some web masters ‘force’ the URL to only www or without. If you notice TechBasedMarketing does NOT use www. Why? It’s just my preference. I think it shortens my already long domain name and I feel by now or at least going on out, people are more focused on the domain name than the www.  In short, I feel the www is redundant.

Ok… so now you know you can ‘force’ your site to display with or without whichever you choose doesn’t matter as long as you pick one and stick with it.

According to the question above, the site owner obviously wants the www in the URL back. Since she is using WordPress, the first thing you should do is:

Log into WordPress ad admin, go to Settings >> General, check that the site address has www in it.

If you’re NOT using WordPress, then I would suggest you check the .htaccess file in the root of your site meaning it would likely be inside /public_html or /www folder. You should have something like this in your .htaccess file.

Photo by Chris Dlugosz