WWW vs Non-WWW for Multisite

  • I was in the process of installing multisite and received this message:

    We recommend you change your siteurl to example.com before enabling the network feature. It will still be possible to visit your site using the www prefix with an address like https://www.example.com but any links will not have the www prefix.

    My questions:

    1. If I don’t change anything and decide I would like to keep the WWW prefix, what are the implications?

    2. By keeping the WWW prefix, what happens when a user types my URL into their browser as non-WWW? I imagine it would redirect to the WWW version?

    3. Do I have to make any edits to the database or config files if I decide to go with WWW instead of WordPress’ recommended non-WWW version?

    Also, just a FYI – I plan to create these additional sites on a subdirectory and NOT a subdomain. Therefore, does the whole WWW vs non-WWW affect me?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    1. If you make sure both your home and site URL, in single site, are www, you have a slight risk of strange redirects when trying to get to the network admin. I don’t know why it happens, nor can I reproduce it, but it only happens when you force www in.

    2. They should be redirected to the www version, but that depends on your server being set up right. If not, you can force it in .htaccess.

    3. Nope.

    And the FYI – Actually, you run the exact same risks :/

    Thread Starter pantone

    (@pantone)

    Thank you for your response, Ipstenu!

    Regarding #1 and your comment about the strange redirects when trying to access admin, I actually experienced something similar in the past on single site. It happened when I changed the site URL to non-www and kept the home URL as www. As soon as I saved the change, I automatically got logged out of admin. When I tried logging back in, it would not let me login, and when I tried visiting the site, I kept receiving an error on my browser for both www and non-www. I would hope that I do not experience that again after I install multisite.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    ?????? Advisor and Activist

    It’s actually worse when it happens in Multisite, because you can’t get into the Network Admin at ALL. Keeps redirecting :/

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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