www / non www failing – hotlinking issue

Hi, thank you for sharing this issue.

Just a couple of questions. What is your official site URL? Is it https://www.postbox.net.nz or is it https://postbox.net.nz?

The reason why I am asking is because I typed both URLs in the browser and they both opened up.

What have you entered in the following fields under Settings -> General in admin?

WordPress Address (URL)
Site Address (URL)

Thank you

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by mbrsolution.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by mbrsolution.

Officially I would like it to be postbox.net.nz but we also allow https://www.postbox.net.nz to work – as there are a number of people or systems that love slapping the www. on the front – legacy practice but it is a good idea to manage that.

The difference is that one of them shows images in the posts and post category (scroll down the home page) and the other doesn’t.

e.g
See https://www.postbox.net.nz/2018/03/11/test-two/
and https://postbox.net.nz/2018/03/11/test-two/

shane

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by itiab. Reason: bad spelling

Hi, it is not a good practice to have both preference available. You should choose one and stick with that preference. You can read more about it from the following URL www-vs-non-www-which-is-better-for-wordpress-seo.

In regards to your issue, the plugin developers will have to investigate this further.

Kind regards

There is no SEO advantage to having both. google sees both and in fact directs to register your www, non www and https and non http

Also some devices add www in front – it’s a PITA but microsoft especially have been chronic at adding things in. Firefox is not beyond doing that either.
Thirdly often one site will have multiple names. google knows they are the same site as the links in the page headers let it know what canonical you value and use.

In NZ we were traditionally using *.co.nz as site names but then they decided to allow the dropping of the .co and just go .nz. this meant cyber squatters would try to take the *.nz and sit on it. So many sites are optimised for .nz and .co.nz

similarly we have close relationships with Australia so a CName of .com.au to a .co.nz is not unusual. However by using the correct tags in the header and adding google search and GA into the site, you provide all the info Google needs to know they are one and the same and which one to prefer.

The ww3 consortium recommends redirecting from naked domain example.co.nz to https://www.example.co.nz but as people type all sorts of muck into the address bar and search getting it right is important and it is more likely to be right if they can find example.co.nz and https://www.example.co.nz

I think your problem would be fixed if you add some .htaccess rules to remove the “www” when a visitor lands on your site.
Have you tried that?

eg, you could add something like the following:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]