www doesn't work but http:// does

  • environm

    (@environm)


    15 years, 9 months ago

    I installed WordPress yesterday, and everything was ready to go. My blog domain is environmental-justice.com.

    Everything was running smoothly, until I totally screwed things up this morning. There was one niggling problem, which was that while http://environmental-justice.com worked, http://www.environmental-justice.com didn’t (or to put it another way, adding www gave an error message). I appreciate that you don’t need to use the www part, but not many people know that, and would add it in, so I wanted this url to work to.

    Anyway, there’s settings within the WordPress dashboard where you can change the website url. I stupidly assumed I couldn’t break anything, but I did. I changed the url from http://environmental-justice.com to http://www.environmental-justice.com within WordPress. Problem is, now WordPress doesn’t work at all. And I can’t log back in to my dashboard to change it back.

    I reinstalled all the WordPress files, hoping that I could just re-do the last part of the installation process. But rather than environmental-justice.com taking me back to the WordPress login screen, as it did when I first went through the process, I just get a ‘server not found’ message. So, I don’t really know how to circumvent things to correct my error. It’s something I think can only be corrected in WordPress, but that’s the thing I can’t access.

    Can anyone tell me how to fix this? At this stage, I don’t care if it doesn’t work with www. I just want the http:// version to work again!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Clayton James

    (@claytonjames)

    15 years, 9 months ago

    The addresses are easy enough to change back in the database. One of these methods should do it.

    Changing The Site URL

    …then you could look into wildcarding your domain name so that either address ( with or without the “www” prefix ) will work for you.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    15 years, 9 months ago

    …then you could look into wildcarding your domain name so that either address ( with or without the “www” prefix ) will work for you.

    That’s not what wildcarding is really — wildcard mans ‘redirect any prefix to one location’ and is what you want to use for multisite with subdomains. Turning it on when you don’t need that can cause other issues.

    Once you change it back to NON www, ask your webhost why www doesn’t work. It sounds like there’s a funky server setting. Even if you’re using MultiSite, that should not be happening. At worst, Multisite would say ‘There’s no www blog!’ So … something’s odd on your server.

    Clayton James

    (@claytonjames)

    15 years, 9 months ago

    That’s not what wildcarding is really — wildcard mans ‘redirect any prefix to one location’

    Correct you are. I apologize for both the hasty and overly “generic” explanation of the issue.

    Thread Starter environm

    (@environm)

    15 years, 9 months ago

    Hi Clayton,

    Many thanks for your advice. Really very much appreciated. I looked at the advice you pointed to and the ‘Relocate Method’ worked perfectly. I didn’t fully understand the first two options because I wasn’t clear about the advice they were giving. Specifically:
    – On the ‘Edit wp-config.php’ advice, it didn’t say specifically where in the file you have to add this. And as a total novice to all this, unless I’m spoonfed every last detail I won’t really know how to follow it. Perhaps this is something that someone out there can clarify on that help page.
    – The ‘edit functions.php’ advice was clear but it just seemed to involve a number of stages, so I skipped this!

    But it doesn’t matter because the third option (Relocation method) worked. So thanks again for all you help. Really appreciated.

    Clayton James

    (@claytonjames)

    15 years, 9 months ago

    You’re welcome. I’m glad it worked out okay for you. It still might be a good idea to ask your host about the www issue as ipstenu suggests.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    15 years, 9 months ago

    I went and double checked. WordPress 3.0 handles www transparently, or at least it’s supposed to. If you set your site to run from http://www.domain.com, then it will redirect domain.com to http://www.domain.com, and vice versa, so if this is NOT happening, there’s something wiggy on your server with mod_rewrite rules.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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