Alternate URLs

Freshness Warning
This article is over 8 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current.

What happens if someone visits wwe.yoursite.com? Or doesn’t add the www? Will they still find your site? Typos in URLs are common. how many times have you ended up on a site you didn’t expect because you mis-typed the domain name. Your customers are doing the same thing, so you should try to plan for it.

You can register alternate domains if you have a frequently-misspelled name. Google has even registered wwwgoogle.com for people that leave out the dot after www. With domains selling for as little as $8 per year, there’s no excuse not to.

You can also create a wildcard DNS entry that will catch typos in the www portion of your URL. If someone enters ww.kalsey.com, wwww.kalsey.com or even thisdoesnotexist.kalsey.com, they will all get my Web site. Ask your hosting company to set this up for you.

Simon Willison
October 3, 2003 10:47 AM

The problem with wildcard DNS is that it means your site suddenly exists at a potentially infinite number of different addresses. This could lead to a number of subtle problems - naive search engines and spiders could index you multiple times and mischievous users could direct people to an obscene address that shows your site.

A better approach is to have a single “definitive” address, then have wildcard DNS set up to send HTTP redirects to send people to that one site. If you go to http://www.slashdot.org/ for example you are bounced straight to http://slashdot.org/, the preferred URL for that site.

Trackback from Gadgetopia
October 3, 2003 11:19 AM

Cybersquat Your Own Site

Excerpt: Alternate URLs : Some good points here. "What happens if someone visits wwe.yoursite.com? Or doesn’t add the www? Will they still find your site? Typos in URLs are common. how many times have you ended up on a site you...

Martin F.
October 3, 2003 2:08 PM

And don’t forget, use the status 301 to redirect.

This discussion has been closed.

Follow me on Twitter

Lijit Search

Best Of

  • California State Fair The California State Fair lets you buy tickets in advance from their Web site. That's good. But the site is a horror house of usability problems.
  • Simplified Form Errors One of the most frustrating experiences on the Web is filling out forms. When mistakes are made, the user is often left guessing what they need to correct. We've taken an approach that shows the user in no uncertain terms what needs to be fixed.
  • Where do the RSS ad startups fit in? Yahoo's RSS advertising service could spell trouble for pure-play RSS advertising services unless they adapt their business model.
  • The best of 2006 I wrote a lot of drivel in 2006. Here's the things that are less crappy than the rest.
  • Lock-in is bad T-Mobile thinks they'll get new Hotspot customers with exclusive content and locked-in devices.
  • More of the best »

Recently Read

Get More

Subscribe | Archives

8

Recently

invisible Fence (Mar 22)
The New York Times has a paywall now. Sorta. If you don't choose to ignore it.
Black status icon for Chrometa (Mar 17)
Replacing the status icon of Chrometa
Using Google Voice as your voicemail on AT&T (Oct 26)
How I set up my iPhone to use Google Voice as it's voicemail system.
Don Mattingly forced to make coaching change (Sep 17)
New LA Dodgers coach starts to wonder if he knows the rules of baseball at all.
In which Vonage pretends their prices haven't changed (Apr 12)
Translating what Vonage marketing says about their price increase into plain English.
Twitter app competition (Apr 12)
Life as a Twitter app developer is far from over.
Twitter app competition (Apr 12)
Life as a Twitter app developer is far from over.
The rest of the world is not like you (Apr 5)
Normal people are different. Keep that in mind when creating or marketing a product.

Subscribe to this site's feed.

Elsewhere

IMified
Build instant messaging applications. (My company)
SacStarts
The Sacramento technology startup community.
Pinewood Freak
Pinewood Derby tips and tricks

Contact

Adam Kalsey

Mobile: 916.600.2497

Email: adam AT kalsey.com

AIM or Skype: akalsey

Resume

PGP Key

©1999-2012 Adam Kalsey.
Content management by Movable Type.