With www. or without www. - why does it work for one?

[kevin116]

We have an issue with our sites for some of our visitors who can access them with the www. but can't access them without the www.

Can anyone say whether this is something to do with
- our server settings?
- visitor's browser settings?
- the visitor's ISP?

It seems to "come and go" and it drives us nuts!

One of the sites in question is
http://www.rentalsfrance.com or
http://rentalsfrance.com

Thanks for any pointers in the right direction

[Easywebdev]

It is to do with your DNS settings.

You have a CNAME entry for www.francerentals.com and an A record for francerentals.com.

Contact your host/domain registrar (whoever's nameservers you are using) and ask then to create an A record for www.francerentals.com instead of a CNAME (which is basically an alias of francerentals.com but can require an additional DNS lookup which is most likely the root of your problem.)

You can check your dns settings at dnsreport.com

[kevin116]

Thanks for the reply, Easywebdev

Can you confirm that you have made a typo in our domain name i.e. you have reversed the "rentals" and "france"

We are www.rentalsfrance.com

Does your solution still hold good for our site, then?

[mike]

It's an easy thing to do actually and I'm always shocked at some of the sites not doing it.

You are basically creating an alias in your DNS record (just like easy said). It takes all of 2 minutes to do and (in my opinion) is just an essential part of setting up any domain.

Actually, when I say 2 minutes I'm assuming you're running your own DNS which I realize a lot of people don't. If your host is taking cae of your DNS you will have to get them to make a couple changes for you but I can't imagine them not being able to handle this sort of thing with a pretty quick turnaraound.

[kevin116]

I have checked
www.rentalsfrance.com and
rentalsfrance.com

on dnsreport.com and both seem to have an A record.

Would somebody mind confirming that I have read the report correctly, please.

If so, are there any other possible causes?

Thanks

[Deep13]

Hi,
If you are using Apache then you may check for the ServerAlias under <virtualhost> tag.. (in httpd.conf file)

In that check for ServerAlias option

see if it is same as following or not..

ServerAlias rentalsfrance.com www.rentalsfrance.com

This will point both the domains to one place..i.e. count both the domains as same...

I hope this helps.
Regards
Deep

EDIT: I checked the site with and without www. It works fine now I suppose...