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Handling Multiple Domains
Published on Apr 08, 2009
If you’re like most website owners, chances are you have more than one domain name for your website. Do you know how they are configured? Save yourself potential headaches by following these simple steps.
1. Decide which domain name will be your main domain
This will be the domain name you add to your business cards and publicize everywhere else. Make sure everyone in your organization is aware.
2. Redirect all other domain names to your main domain
When I say redirect I mean redirect. If you type in one of these additional domain names the address in your browser bar should change to the main domain (go to www.tunnelseven.com to see what I mean). You should never stay on this additional domain. This causes confusion for your visitors and search engines will actually see this additional domain as an additional website and you’ll be competing against yourself. Not good.
If you are unsure how to do this, it is done with a 301 redirect and the code is added to an .htaccess file. Here is the code I use on this website:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^tunnelseven.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.tunnelseven.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.tunnel7.com/$1 [R=301,L]
I won’t go into the technical specifications of this code, but if you want to learn more I found this article, which offers a good explanation.
3. Relax knowing you’ve handled your multiple domain names in the best way possible
That’s right. Relax. You’re all set. Down the road you could always use one of the additional domain names for an additional website. But as long as all the additional domain names are pointing at your website make sure they are redirected using the simple steps above.
Be nice. Share with others.
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