How do I switch my website to www.mydomain?

[lauragee]

I'm having canonical URL problems. I keep trying to set everything to www.mydomain.com, but I'm using wordpress and my site keeps either disappearing completely or giving me an infinite loop error. I've tried changing my main wordpress setting, whether I have canonical URLs turned on, my .htaccess file...

Could this be an issue with either my host or my domain registrar? Any ideas how I can fix it?

[BlueprintMarketing]

I have sent the information. To your PM and please feel free to reply that way. I have one call I have to make very quickly. And that I will be available.

[lauragee]

Yes, please do!

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Laura,

I can definitely understand your situation and completely understand why you would not want to more responsibility. I don't know if you recall, but I said I had access to some resources because I've been so active in hosting I believe I can help you out  for Wordpress.

Mary private message you with information?

Sincerely,

Tom

[lauragee]

I thought that page.ly looked nice, but the reason I didn't move there is because I can't afford to. I know I mentioned this before, but to put it more bluntly, last week my internet was shut off for a while because I couldn't pay the bill. I didn't know if I was going to be able to pay my other utilities, either, but this month I lucked out. I just thought about it and realized that even if I had been able to scrape together the money for page.ly for the month, there's absolutely no guarantee I'd be able to do it again month after month.

I know blogger isn't as good for SEO, although to be honest I couldn't find a ton of information about that. For one thing, I see that internal links have a lot of parameters, but my permalinks and inbound links are pretty simple, so isn't that what matters for SEO purposes? And actually, I find blogger to be more user-friendly, so it has fixed some of my problems, like redirecting my naked domain to the www domain automatically for the first time.

I've had blogs on blogger before, and I know they get some search traffic eventually. My current plan is to see if my site becomes commercially viable at all, and if it starts to make the profit to pay for it, maybe I'll actually pay someone to migrate it to page.ly or similar and make sure it's set up right. If not, eh, no more money lost, at least.

I do appreciate the other resources, though, especially the free email to replace google apps, which I searched for for a while and couldn't find, and also copyblogger – I've started listening to their podcast, and it's very interesting, thanks!

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Laura,

I would take the blogger version of your website then simply put it on a  functional framework click WordPress preferably Genesis-based

I have attached a bunch of links most of them are themes you can also use 1st link the screaming frog is Seo spider to show just how bad the the job script in blogger is affecting your ranking.

http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

your links have way too many parameters in them to ever rank well

http://www.organicencyclopedia.com/search/label/Cooking With Whole Foods

you like page.ly I do to their great use them if that's the one you like

simply going to this URL http://www.seomoz.org/pro-perks

find Page.ly you will have 30% off for life ( it will show you what you see below gone the logo it will take you to the a page with discounts)

https://page.ly/

one thing I would recommend buying to avoid conflict is but dollar month and it's Amazon route 53  DNS you simply place the name servers into your old DNS in addition to being very easy to use to be in much faster http://aws.amazon.com/route53/

it costs 50 cents a the domain per month

always cloudflare for free just make sure the orange clouds are not lit http://www.cloudflare.com free for life

remember because of security reasons none of these hosts serve e-mail so you must have hosted e-mail like Google apps unfortunately Google apps is no longer free. But there is an identical product you can get for free rate here and it imports all your old mail into with just a username and password

https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html

pick the light plan

30% Off All Plans

Page.ly is a superior Managed WordPress Hosting solution. They take care of the technical stuff, so you can get back to blogging

I would then go to this page below copy blogger if you want quality free advice from people who are extremely well known in the industry in fact they make these themes own on a hosting company and many more things to with blogging you will have no trouble at all moving your comment and onto a new WordPress server with page.ly you simply  export from blogger into WordPress on a fresh database.

http://www.copyblogger.com/about/

try reading copyblogger see what you think

http://www.copyblogger.com/human-web-design/

http://my.studiopress.com/themes/balance/

http://my.studiopress.com/themes/eleven40/

http://my.studiopress.com/themes/focus/

http://my.studiopress.com/themes/executive/

http://my.studiopress.com/themes/mocha/

http://my.studiopress.com/themes/luscious/

http://my.studiopress.com/themes/focus/

http://demo.studiopress.com/focus/colors/blue/

http://my.studiopress.com/themes/decor/

http://demo.studiopress.com/decor/colors/amethyst/

http://my.studiopress.com/themes/crystal/

https://page.ly/

http://websynthesis.com/

https:/zippykid.com

http://wpengine.com

I hope this helps,

Tom

[BlueprintMarketing]

I would do that page.ly,  Zippykid, WPengine web synthesis are all fantastic.

you can't go worng with any of them I think go with what you like.

your website will be much better at any of the the four then where it is.

let me know what

You sould google "Wealthy Affiliate sites" alott of people not happy.

SEOmoz does mozicons all over the world + they know what there talking about

the WA sites is on Amazon yours is on a slow server theres is on a big one with a CDN if you want to make money writing for profit talk to people like James at skyrocketseo.co.uk or brian at coppybloger there here not at the WA

They are well known for there work.

You should pick the domain with the most Moz trust then make one great site not five ok sites Google has  Devalued exact match domains so much that it is unbelievable. The truth of the matter is if you focus your time on one excellent blog rather than spread around on some good blogs but not truly great that it will be almost impossible to get a following that you want. Look at all the big companies from people who have made it in blogging  copy blogger for instance.

I knowing what I know from what you just said strongly agree focus on a singular blog put everything into it and don't worry about having to spread out using a domain name by then domain lots of much authority you can name the title of the URL what ever you want and it will rank.

Great choices unhappy to see you're going in the right direction.

Sincerely,

Thomas

[lauragee]

I am strongly considering transferring my main project to page.ly as you suggested, BTW.

[lauragee]

Ok, hmm. I don't believe my sites are hosted at Amazon, they are hosted through Wealthy Affiliate (although, it's possible that all WA sites are hosted at Amazon and they just don't tell you that, I honestly have no idea). The only interaction I have had with Amazon is putting an affiliate ad on my page.

I have bought about five domains because, well, I already use a couple of them for other projects, and I just found some more great keywords for subjects I would like to write about. I'm trying to pursue niche writing for profit, and not all of my writing subjects fit into the same niche. Does that make sense?

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Laura,

I believe I can fix your problem. One of 2 ways I noticed you are hosted on Amazon? Is this correct?

If so that is a good thing my suggestion is we properly change the htaccess file

so that it works to follow the perm links.

If it gives us any trouble I have a lot of resources at my disposal I am positive this can be fixed

Amazon has a free price tier that will allow you to use their DNS for approximately dollar month but I have a free DNS resource.

Why are you buying so many domains buying so many domains if I can ask?

I'm going to send you a PM with a solution.

Ok?

[lauragee]

Thanks. Yeah, I noticed that pages were loading both with and without the www... but does that really matter, as long as Google only considers one version real for SEO purposes? I thought that was the important point.

I've tried redirecting with various plugins, but unfortunately that just causes the endless loop error no matter how I do it. I feel like there must be some mystery setting working against whatever I put in.

I appreciate your suggestions about registrars, hosting, etc, but the reason I'm using what I'm using is mostly because I'm broke. My current host lets me run as many websites as I want for a set price, and I have domains on a bunch of different registrars from getting $1 deals... yeah, I can see this strategy is not paying off, so I will look into some of the services you recommend and see if they will be possibilities in the future.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Laura,

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but unfortunately I can reach your site at www.

and without it that means you need a 301 redirect I would download a plug-in like this that will let you simply do a 301 redirect inside WordPress

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-seo-redirect-301/

or

http://www.webhostingbillboard.com/wordpress-plugins/best-wordpress-plugins-for-301-redirects/

Again I am very sorry to tell you this. As it seemed like everything was all set. Unfortunately now we know that there has to be a 301 redirect put in place for the site to work correctly.

I know I've said this earlier but this appears to be a business site for you I would really really really suggest using a host that specializes in WordPress hosting

zippykid.com will handle your DNS for you and everything you need done will be done by them simply put name server DNS records of theirs in your name server DNS slots and they do everything and not when I say everything that's what I mean every single thing and the make your site a lot faster and safer all of these guys will but this is the only one that will control your DNS as well all of them will help you.

page.ly you also get 30% off of their site for life and pro perks found here at seomoz

will help you with your DNS they will not allow you to run MX records through theirs which I think is not cool but whatever.

WPengine you get 4 months free pro perks seomoz

will make you use your own DNS but will help you just like all these others when it comes to configuring the DNS to work properly.

Web synthesis

is a great host and once again you will be on your own with DNS but they will help you as far as advice and is for setting up your site.

Please understand I'm not trying to sell you on anything as you can tell there's no affiliate links or anything like that I would like a few simply type it in yourself to not follow any links I give you just so you know this is not me trying to make money it seems like if this is can be a big issue there should be larger issues coming down the road in the speed of your website is not great this could all be fixed very easily by using any of those guys would try WP engine you get 4 months free you can host your DNS at DNS made easy for 20 bucks a year including 10 domains. And it's much faster visits anycast then. What you're running now any of the hosts above would be more than happy to tell you exactly what you need to do to get your site to run on their servers I cannot stress enough how much easier this makes life having to manage WordPress host if you get hacked though fix it those types of things these things that we dealt with tonight would've been solved in 1 ticket

I hope I have helped you and I'm glad to see that your site is making progress. It seems like a very cool one one that I will learn some good lessons from I will bookmark it and Recommend to my friends and to parents. If I can be of any more assistance please let me know I'm going to send you a PM with my direct info in case you need to speak more quickly.

Sincerely,

Thomas

[lauragee]

I was able to use that feature to set the canonical URL for my home page (to the www version!) I tried to use the 301 redirect feature under it to redirect to the www page, which still caused the redirection loop, but since I basically just wanted to do that for SEO purposes, I think that will work! Now I just need to go through and set canonical URLs for the other pages, but I don't have too many, so that is fine. Thanks again, I have been fighting with this for days.

[BlueprintMarketing]

have you tryed a new web browser

redirection problem a different browser as if it works for me and pingdom it sound like your computer is storing the old info

I would tell your host to make a 301 redirect to www.organicencyclopedia.com

as this should not be happening to you and not to me or pingdom.

Remove the following redirect chain if possible: http://s.amazon-adsystem.com/iui3?d=assoc-amazon.com&enId=Associates&eId=view&r=1&rP=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.organicencyclop…http://s.amazon-adsystem.com/iui3?d=assoc-amazon.com&enId=Associates&eId=view&r=1&rP=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.organicencyclop…Remove the following redirect chain if possible: http://www.google.com/pagead/drt/uihttps://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/drt/si?p=CAA&ut=AFAKxlQAAAAAUSnWpv5PG8GBMgkej42-FWI_MQygcYW9Read more at Google Code

this is the only code redirect

[BlueprintMarketing]

the

rel="canonical" href="http://organicencyclopedia.com/"

is not showing www. to fix on Wordpress SEO just

do what is shown here http://just-ask-kim.com/canonical-post-page/#.USnUa0XipdE

right now it is here but it's a easy fix

I hope I was of help rember I  use the transport seo to Yoast here

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-data-transporter/

then remember to delete the old all in one seo

[lauragee]

But, Ok, that's good to know about canonical URL being only for SEO. I guess it's a redirection problem rather than a canonical URL problem.

[lauragee]

Yes, it also looks like it's working fine on my end right now... but I have the address listed as organicencyclopedia.com under general settings. If I change the main address to www.organicencyclopedia.com (which is what I am trying to do), it causes a redirect loop error again. (Also, just in case my All in One SEO was causing a problem I deactivated that and installed Yoast, but the same thing is still happening)

[BlueprintMarketing]

Laura,

it is your web browser

http://www.organicencyclopedia.com/

works fine having canonical URLs turned on makes no difference in a redirect it could say whatever and it would make no difference in the actual working of the server

canonical URLs are a seo thing only the do not and cannot affect a redirect or start one on a server only a 301redirect  can do this it is your  web browser's cache

I know this look your site as does not do any loops here

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/Ntpv7AiZh/www.organicencyclopedia.com

[lauragee]

Well... I can now enter www.organicencyclopedia.com OR organicencyclopedia.com and go to the page without being redirected, which...that in itself seems kind of odd because I have canonical URLs turned on... but anyway, I'm still getting the redirection loop if I change the URLS to www in general settings. Guess I'll try again tomorrow in case I just haven't waited long enough, though.

[BlueprintMarketing]

I promise you you will not have any damage done to your website by following the instructions.

All that is going to happen is you will confirm your name servers because network solutions it is about the worst place to host your DNS you can find.

Then it will allow you to see your a record it shows you as managing advanced a records it believes that it is advanced because you're not using their name servers you have decided to name them yourself. In addition I'm going to go as far as saying you should use https://www.cloudflare.com

to host your domain records however you would not get the ability to have custom name record without paying. If it means a lot to have custom name records I would not use cloudflare

I just used clould flare to back up your DNS records so you will have a copy regardless of anything and I do want to make you comfortable and have you know that you will not have your site destroyed by simply following what you need to do. If you are going to use  cloudflare let me know so I can take your records off and there will be a duplicate issue

very important  remove the c name  shown below and in the photograph that is a misconfiguration you need a 2nd a record.

www  is an alias of organicencyclopedia.com

It will also give you an error message if you try to add more than one www

so  delete the c name before prior to adding the a record because seeing names need to go to host names given by the web host not by just adding your domain name in the cname box we want it to look like this

http://i.imgur.com/Bx5d4fg.png

htttp://www.networksolutions.com/support/a-records-ip-addresses-2/

dWbk0c0.png Bx5d4fg.png

[lauragee]

Hey, I followed those instructions and I finally had a place to enter the information! So, it did have a value already in place for www, which makes me wonder if this was even the problem at all... but I did replace it with the value you posted, so now I just have to wait for the change to take effect, and hopefully it will all work. Thanks so much for your help!

[BlueprintMarketing]

Yes they are trying to get you to confirm that you want to use your own name servers and if I may add their DNS setup is garbage because they make money off of managing it for you.

To update A records

1.     Log in to Account Manger

2.     Within **Account Manager, **use the drop down under **My Domain Names **to choose the domain you’d like to manage and click the Go button

3.     In the green box, select Change Where Domain Points

4.     Select Advanced DNS

5.     Click the Continue button

6.     If the domain name was not previously pointed to Network Solutions nameservers (DNS) you will receive a page with messaging regarding this change.  If you’d like to continue, click the Move Nameservers to Network Solutions button

7.     In the IP Address (A Records) section, click Edit A Records

8.     Your current A records are listed in editable form, and any Network Solutions service that is associated with the A record is listed below the Numeric IP text box

9.     The first three hosts listed are the most common hosts used with domain names:

o    www : Points to the specified IP address when Internet users enter an address, such as www.jimbikes.com

o     @ (none) : Points to the specified IP address when a user enters just the domain name without anything before it, such as jimsbikes.com

o    * (All OThers) : Points any unassociated host for a domain name to the specified IP address, similar to a catch-all feature that could be used for any misspelled host names

To add or edit A records

1.     Enter or edit the new host name in the Host column

2.     If needed, modify the TTL settings (7200 is the default)

3.     Enter or edit the IP number under the Numeric IP Address column in any remaining empty row

4.     Click Continue

** You see they make you go through all that just to add an a record. Confirming the a records in their will not harm you at all.**

Simply confirm them and continue then follow the advice above.

I can't tell you how strongly I recommend using a different host.

[lauragee]

Thank you! So, just to clarify, if I follow these instructions will my website be destroyed? I mean, the instructions you gave about how to add the record on network solutions.

[lauragee]

I only have fields that look like this:

name server 1:  _______________

name server 2: _______________

nothing with two fields like your picture

(I tried to attach a screenshot, but no luck)

AO21OQZ AO21OQZ photostream

[BlueprintMarketing]

Network solutions makes money off of scaring people that way. In my opinion they're the only ones that give that really Stupid warning to people to make them feel afraid.

do not change your name servers unless you are going to move to a better host

here is the way it is done on network solutions you do have to click advanced

When you move Name Servers to Network Solutions, your existing Name Servers will no longer be used.  As a result, website and email from other providers will be lost.

1.   Within **Account Manager, **select My Domain Names

2.   Select the domain name you want to change and select Manage

3.   In the green box, select Change Where Domain Points

4. Select Advanced DNS

5. Select the type of record you would like to work with

IP Address (A records)

This is the Address Record and is used to map the domain name server (or hostname) to its numeric IP address. In other words, the A record resolves a domain name or points the domain name to the correct location by means of the IP address.

1. In the IP Address (A records) section, click on the **Edit A Records **button

b) To add the new Host and Numeric IP addresses or update the existing Numeric IP addresses enter the appropriate information in the text boxes, if needed modify the TTL settings (7200 is the default) then click on the Continue button.

2. A confirmation page will appear verifying that your records have been updated, review the information carefully, and then click on the Save Changesbutton.

http://www.networksolutions.com/support/how-to-manage-advanced-dns-records/

you will be adding

www.oorganicencyclopedia.com. 86400 IN A 54.235.194.53

if you see the  domain already there like this on the left oorganicencyclopedia.com

simply type in www NO Dot then go to the box on the right and enter 54.235.194.53 if the box asking for TTL or time to live is blank you can type 86400 as your time to live is best to be the same for each a record and unless otherwise needed.

I updated this to get rid of the 1st a selection as It does not pertain to what were doing.

And I would again if this site is a business site or something you care about quite a bit strongly suggest using to manage WordPress host the only one that will control your DNS records for you on an excellent system run by DynECT

is Zippykid.com they are very inexpensive for what you get.

[BlueprintMarketing]

I am almost 100% sure that you simply need a 2nd a record like this record below posted in is a photograph. I am using DNS made easy MS every DNS host is different  I prefer Dyn however I'm trying this one out and some do not show your domain name as it does not show my domain name in this photograph some will show the domain name all you have to do is enter

www no dot before the domain name or in the box to the left of the IP address that you have to add as well

so it will show

www.organicencyclopedia.com  IP address

** and**

organicencyclopedia.com IP address

** no cname is needed for this to happen.**

** Only the correct a name is needed right now.**

** Please let me know this was of help**

** sincerely,**

** Thomas**

Bx5d4fg.png

[lauragee]

This sounds like it should be very helpful, but I'm having trouble adding more records. I guess I shouldn't have gone with a weird cheap registrar  I have the option to add more DNS records, but not with content on two sides...I just have a bunch of single fields for adding things like "name server 3:" well, really I could add any number of name servers, but that seems to be the only option I have. There are some advanced DNS controls (which I can't see yet) but when I click on that it warns me that

"In order to use Advanced DNS Manager, your Name Servers must be moved to Network Solutions managed name servers."  ...so that's why I'm afraid of my website being destroyed if I try any of that, but that might be the way to do it.  By the way, if I figure out where I can enter that, is that a CNAME record?

[BlueprintMarketing]

I'm sorry this did not attach correctly the 1st time. I wanted to make sure that you were able to see what I'm talking about please let me know that you can see this.

Bx5d4fg.png

[lauragee]

Ok, I just tried changing both addresses to www.organicencyclopedia.com, and again I'm having the same problem. I tried a different browser, but it still says it can't open the page because of too many redirects.

[BlueprintMarketing]

your DNS shows

oorganicencyclopedia.com. 86400 IN A 54.235.194.53

the us you are missing the record needed to serve www

please place a DNS record like this in your DNS

www.oorganicencyclopedia.com. 86400 IN A 54.235.194.53

with the www  on the left side and your IP address shown above on the right side.

If I may make a personal suggestion I would strongly recommend posting with a managed WordPress host somebody like Zippykid, WP engine, pagely or web synthesis would be a preferred system to what you're using now.

Zippy kid would probably give you the most bang for your buck by a lot As they would control your DNS for you and offer up one and all solution for everything WordPress.

Please let me know that this is been of help sincerely Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

please let me look at your DNS before you go and make changes. You're using WordPress so you do not have to worry as much you have to have an a record pointed to

organicencyclopedia.com  whatever your IP is

www.organicencyclopedia.com whatever your IPS

**** or****

**** www cname whatever your host has provided you.****

**** Let me do a dig on your DNS and I will tell you and you are just missing if it is configured correctly the www****

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Laura,

I see no issue with your canonical URL in my browser which has not cashed

your website yet it shows <**link rel="canonical" href="http://organicencyclopedia.com/" **

that's exactly what I want to see.

To change your website to work with www. simply go to the settings part where it is illustrated above and change the URLs in

| <label for="siteurl">WordPress Address (URL)</label> | |
| <label for="home">Site Address (URL)</label> |

Enter the address here if you want your site homepage to be different from the directory you installed WordPress.

|

so they both have www.  so you would cut and paste this URL into their

http://www.organicencyclopedia.com

that would give you the URL that you want. In order to keep your re canonical

links updated with your exact website links I would substitute out the plug-in you're using for you the one below. However this is really not necessary just something I like. Make sure after you change your URL your plug-in all-in-one Seo pack plug-in is set to re canonical

http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

<link rel="canonical" href="http://organicencyclopedia.com/" />

I hope this is helped. Please let me know what you see as I believe it is because you are using the same browser. It's a catch a problem

[lauragee]

Could it be an issue of needing to set up a CNAME record with www? I just looked into doing that a little, but that requires switching my DNS settings back to my registrar, apparently. If I did that would my website be destroyed, or would it still be there when I switch the DNS settings back later? (Or is this CNAME thing completely the wrong idea?)

[lauragee]

Thanks! my website is organicencyclopedia.com, which is what it usually says in both of the fields you show above. I have tried changing it in either or both fields, but that has caused an error every time. Yes, I have All In One SEO. When I say I tried turning canonical URLs off, I mean in this plugin, with the check-box (I think it would be good to have canonical URLs turned on, but I would like to have everything set up so that the canonical address has www if possible, and I think right now it's the opposite). I don't know what you mean by am I on the same host.

I can't easily try it again in another browser because I've set everything back to the original settings (no www) so my site wouldn't be completely broken... but if I try to change things again, I'll definitely check it out in a different browser.

[BlueprintMarketing]

I need more information about what you're actually doing.  when you click on your settings link to the left of your screen when inside your WordPress dashboard what do you see below WordPress address

and site address as shown below.?

Do they match?

| <label for="siteurl">WordPress Address (URL)</label> | |
| <label for="home">Site Address (URL)</label> |

Enter the address here if you want your site homepage to be different from the directory you installed WordPress.

|

I need to know this before I can help you with your problem. Is it seems you could have many things during this but you're talking about a problem that would be only able to exist because a plug-in being given is not the correct information. Are you using WordPress Seo plug-in? or any SEO  Plug-in?

would you mind sharing your URL with me?

it sounds like you need to clean your cache. And you could have an issue with 301 redirects or you just didn't match up the site correctly when setting it up.

you state

" have canonical URLs turned on, my .htaccess file..."

I'm assuming you're on the same host?

You are getting redirected because of or a separate issue because of cache problems would you mind trying your website into different web browser

The link below will only illustrate the need to have this correct not how To fix WordPress redirect issues like the ones I believe you are having however please send your URL to meet in up private message or please post it I can give you much more in permission after looking at it that I can by guessing.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

Sincerely,

Thomas