Making the non www version of a TLD be the default in Unbounce

  • 25 January 2016
  • 3 replies
  • 6 views
Joe_Savitch

I have seen the documentation on how to make a www version of a domain work with unbounce. And I have seen the documentation on adding an A Record to have the non www point to the www version.

I am trying to have the NON www version of the site be the default. Is that possible or does it have to be the WWW? I am building a home page for a site that will launch in a month or two and we don’t use the www as a matter of course. So I’d like to avoid using to start if possible.

If it isn’t possible that is ok too… but just thought I would ask.

Joe

3 replies

Stuart_Mitchell

Hi Joe,

I think there might be a bit of confusion between DNS and redirection/canonicalization.

You should be able to use a non-www domain name to get to your landing  page without any further configuration. What the DNS does (A records etc) is tell your web server that people visiting your domain name on either www or non-www should still get a page served. What it doesn’t do is choose the default option or manage the redirection of moving one potential visitor onto or away from www.

As long as you have both an A record for www and an A record for non-www then the next step is to sort out your redirection.  The A record for non-www should 

For this purpose, you should use 301 redirection and specify the correct www or non-www page in your canonicalization meta tags in your pages source code.

If you’re using the Unbounce Wordpress integration that can be accomplished within WordPress’s settings and configuration, probably the easiest way to do it. 

If you’re not then you can use a few lines of code in your root .htaccess files, this works if you’re on some kind of nix installation with CPanel / WHM and the code you need to add to your .htaccess file is:

RewriteBase /   
 RewriteCond %{HTTP\_HOST} ^www931a3f856d6a42c44266957da18569ba#46;(.\*)$ [NC]  
 RewriteRule ^(.\*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

If you are on a windows machine then you will need to  go to your iis server control panel look for url rewriting, there you can select which exact URL you wish to forward visitors to from the drop down box.

Cheers

Stuart.

Joe_Savitch

Stuart, 

This makes total sense. I am 99% sure that we are opening an account and putting DNS at the cPanel level not managing it from Network Solutions. So using the 301 will take care of exactly what I need. We will set it up as the documentation said with the CName for the www and the A record for the non-www version then put the 301 in on our end and voila, a web page.

thank you,
Joe

H

For an easier change, follow this documentation.

http://documentation.unbounce.com/hc/en-us/articles/204011960-Setting-Up-a-naked-domain-a-domain-wit…

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