index.php?wwwRedirect

[coolfx35]

Appending "index.php?wwwRedirect" in the end of the url, yes, I know why it's doing it. but how do I properly get rid of it?

I know a lot of people post this already, but non seem to be mentioned about the SEO results from it.

I used SMF 1.1.18 for 3 years, and never had this issue. 

SMF 2.0.5 seems to be adding "index.php?wwwRedirect" in the end of the URL, which cause google to gets all confused, and my site ranked poorly as a result.

I know why it's doing that, but what I don't understand is, why 1.1.18 doesn't do this?

Many thanks if you can help me out.

[Arantor]

It does if you didn't configure it properly, like having www in the site name but calling it without using www in your browser.

If you don't use www in your site address, it won't happen. Also note that it's handled as a proper redirect so there are no major SEO consequences from it.

[coolfx35]

It does if you didn't configure it properly, like having www in the site name but calling it without using www in your browser.

If you don't use www in your site address, it won't happen. Also note that it's handled as a proper redirect so there are no major SEO consequences from it.

I hear what you saying, but I have created 30 forums using SMF 1.1.18 and this was never an issue, I am configuring 2.0.5 exactly the same way.  That's why this seems so strange.

in 1.1.18, entering both domain with or without "www" won't get wwwRedirect.

What should I set  for "Preferred domain" in google webmaster tools

Don't set a preferred domain
Display URLs as www.domain.com [nofollow]
Display URLs as domain.com [nofollow]

[Arantor]

As far as I know the code didn't actually change between 1.1.x and 2.0 for that...

So, did you actually configure the forum to use www in the domain name? (I am not interested in getting into the GWT stuff yet. We'll deal with that in due course.)

[coolfx35]

As far as I know the code didn't actually change between 1.1.x and 2.0 for that...

So, did you actually configure the forum to use www in the domain name? (I am not interested in getting into the GWT stuff yet. We'll deal with that in due course.)

okay, even SMF community forum is doing the wwwRedirect. that makes me feel better now.

[Arantor]

-sigh-

If you visit simplemachines.org, yes it gets directed.

If you visit www.simplemachines.org it doesn't get redirected and doesn't include the wwwRediect. You know, doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing to minimise duplicate links for you.

[Kindred]

hmm... I think that it actually did change between 1.1.x and 2.0

However - if it did change it was because too many admins complained "my forum is broken" when they tried to use the www subdomain.

coolfx35, this is completely correct behavior.
If you don't want the code redirect to show up, then you can modify your .htaccess to automatically forward people from the root domain to the www url (or the other way around). There are dozens of online tutorials on how to do that.

[Arantor]

I checked, the only difference is that it uses 'www' rather than 'wwwRedirect' in the querystring. The surrounding code behaves the same way.

[Kindred]

Ok.

the rets of my post remains correct.