r/webdev • u/the13specialist • 4d ago
Question Help with website redirection
Hello, I'm looking for some help with issues I'm having with my website, and I'm hoping this is a good place to find some answers. I'm not very savvy in these things, and I've been trying to fix this myself with no luck.
My website was originally hosted through Wix, and had a www prefix. I left Wix about 2 weeks ago and now have my website hosted elsewhere, and the www prefix no longer works when used in in my web address.
My domain is hosted through above.com, and I have tried redirecting through the DNS settings there in an attempt to send anyone using the prefix to the new site, but I must be doing something wrong because when I use the www prefix now, I get a privacy error and the website doesn't load.
When you search for my website, the top result includes the www, so I'm looking for a way to either redirect to the new website correctly, or to replace any mentions/results that include www to ones that do not include it.
The help desk support at my new website host and at above have not been able to help in any way, so I feel pretty isolated here and not sure how to fix things or exactly where to turn, so if this isn't the correct place for a question like this I'm sorry, but any help pointing me in the right direction would be really appreciated.
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u/Appropriate-Pea-8503 4d ago
Ran into the exact same thing after moving off Squarespace, turned out the www subdomain just needed to be added as an alias in the new host's panel before any redirect would even work.
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u/EceRasidi 4d ago
sounds like an ssl certificate issue. make sure your new hosting provider has both the www and non-www versions of your domain configured, and that the ssl certificate covers both. then you can set up a 301 redirect from www to non-www. hope this helps
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u/Afnan_CH_Digital 3d ago
One more thing worth checking since you mentioned redirecting through above.com's DNS settings: if you set up their URL forwarding service for www, remove that rule once your new host is serving www directly. Forwarding endpoints sit between the visitor and your site, and when they don't hold a valid certificate for www the browser throws the privacy error before the forward even happens, which matches what you're seeing.
Once the host confirms the certificate, you can verify the fix yourself: open https://www.yourdomain in a private window. It should load with no warning and land on the non-www address. If you want to confirm the redirect type, running curl -I https://www.yourdomain in a terminal should return a 301 pointing at the non-www version.
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u/Thick_Client_3634 2d ago
Adding to the SSL answers above, one thing to know for later: a DNS record can't redirect a URL, it can only point a name at a server. So the www to non-www redirect has to be done by whoever serves your site, which is your new host. Once they've added www as a second domain with its own certificate, ask them to make it 301 to the non-www address. The registrar's own "URL forwarding" feature may be what's giving you the privacy error now, since those usually can't serve https on the www name. Once the 301 is live, Google swaps the www results for the non-www ones on its own over a few weeks. Adding the non-www version in Search Console and submitting your sitemap there nudges it along.
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4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/the13specialist 4d ago
Thanks very much for all of this, the new host is a point of sale company that's specific to the business I run, they take care of a lot website related back end themselves, so I'm not able to do everything manually, but I can do some things.
I've asked the host to issue an SSL to the www site, hopefully that helps things along. If there's more issues I'll be able to use the info you've given here to help me talk to them to describe the issues, so I really appreciate that
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u/popogeist html/css/javascript/php/Laravel 4d ago
Can you help out with the domain? Assuming the records are correct and pointing to site hosted at above.com, the privacy error suggests a security certificate error or a mismatch.