How Do You 301 Redirect a Naked Domain To a Subdomain such as www

QUESTION
How do you 301 redirect a naked domain to some sub domain, most commonly www, so that when someone goes to yourDomain.com they'll be 301 redirected to www.yourDomain.com?

ANSWER
For those who don't understand what 301 redirect is here's a quick answer. When your webpage has been moved to a new place you usually want to set your web server to tell whoever wanting to access your old webpage that it's been moved to a new place permanently. This behavior is realized with a 301 redirect. If the client is a search engine they'll know your web page has been moved permanently.

There are at least 2 ways to 301 redirect a naked domain to a subdomain:

1: In your IP host setting add an 'A record' with host @ and configure your web server accordingly.

2: Have your domain name registry do that for you.

Below we'll look at each method in more detail and also look at the pros and cons of each.

1. In your web host setting add an 'A record' with Host set to @ that points to your machine's IP and configure your web server accordingly.
In your web host setting add an 'A record' with Host set to @ that points to your machine's IP.

If you use GoDaddy.com here's a screen shot of that setting:



Once you finish the setting you may need to wait for up to 1 hour for the setting to take effect. Then configure your web server to recognize the naked domain and 301 redirect it to any subdomain you want such as www. This depends on the capabilities of your web server but it should have this feature. For example if you use Nginx and your domain is mensfashionforless.com then here's what you put in your web server's configuration file:

server {
listen 80;
server_name mensfashionforless.com;
rewrite ^/(.*) http://www.mensfashionforless.com/$1 permanent;
}

This rule simply means that the web server listens on port 80 and it responds to domain name 'mensfashionforless.com' by 301 redirecting it to 'www.mensfashionforless.com' (what 'permanent' means).

In fact, this rule exhibits a great benefit that this way offers: You have total control over how the redirect happens. In this case you'll be able to redirect http://mensfashionforless.com/some-page.html to http://www.mensfashionforless.com/some-page.html. Again you have total control.

2. Have your domain name registry do that for you.
Have your domain name registry (e.g. GoDaddy) do that for you (read http://www.printfection.com/help/article.php?articleid=41 if you use GoDaddy). Basically you'll be able to pick 'Forward Domain' option to forward your naked domain, or non-www domain, to any domain you'd like via 301 redirect. Typically you'd forward your naked domain to your www domain but you can actually forward it to any domain you want.

This depends on the abilities of the registry you registered your domain with but they usually have this functionality.

This way is very limited because you might not be able to forward your old path to your new path. For example you might want to redirect http://mensfashionforless.com/some-page.html to http://www.mensfashionforless.com/some-page.html but whether you can do this totally depends on your web host. In addition your web host, although unlikely, can alter their functionality any time they want. You are basically at their mercy.

Questions? Shoot me an email.