Does my domain work with and without www?
Your domain is reachable at four addresses: with and without www, each over http and https. All four should arrive at the same website, and encrypted.
What does that mean?
To a browser, example.com and www.example.com are two
different addresses. Both need a DNS record of their own and a valid certificate,
otherwise a warning comes up. The usual approach is to make one of them the main
address and redirect the other there permanently.
Then there is the encryption. A request over http should switch to
https before any data gets transferred at all. Search engines have
counted that for years, and a form without encryption gets marked as insecure by the
browser.
This tool calls up all four addresses, follows every redirect and compares where they end.
What can go wrong?
- Only one of the two variants has a DNS record. The other leads nowhere.
- Both work, but they do not redirect to one another. Then the website exists twice, and search engines split the standing between them.
- The certificate only covers one of the two addresses.
- The switch to https only happens after a redirect on http. A detour that can be avoided.
In short
One main address, three redirects leading there, all of it over https. That is what the normal case looks like.
How do you fix it?
If a DNS record is missing, it gets added at whoever manages the DNS. Which provider that is stands in the result above. The redirect between the variants, on the other hand, belongs on the web server or in the host's control panel. The order with the fewest detours: switch to https first, then on to the main address.
Questions that usually come up together:
