Redirect traffic to the apex or www. subdomain

Although the “www” prefix is no longer a necessary part of any URL, it still lingers around the internet, and probably always will. So why is that? And what could be the benefits of redirecting your apex domain, also called your root domain or naked domain, to your www. subdomain?

Read on to find out more about why you should redirect traffic from a root domain to a www. subdomain, or the other way around, and how redirect.pizza can help.

Want to know how to implement this type of redirect using redirect.pizza? Read our handy guide:

how to redirect traffic to the "www." subdomain. 

What's the difference between the root domain and the www. subdomain?

Before we dive into the details about the benefits of redirecting your root domain to your www. subdomain, let’s start with some basics to learn more about what these terms mean.

A root domain, also known as the apex domain or naked domain, is the main part of your URL. For example, redirect.pizza is our root domain. Any URL containing a subdomain, such as www.redirect.pizza or https://status.redirect.pizza are not considered domain apexes. 

Adding the “www.” prepend to this root domain will bring you to the www. subdomain. “www” stands for “World Wide Web”. The “www” subdomain was originally used to indicate that a website is a part of the web and not, for example, part of the FTP – another part of the internet. It’s actually more of a remnant from the early days of the internet. Because nowadays, the internet is almost solely used for surfing the web.

Make sure you communicate one version of your website

Redirecting your root domain to your www. subdomain (or the other way around) is a smart thing to do as part of your communication strategy. By setting up a redirect, you ensure that only one version of your website URL is communicated to the visitors. Whether they type in, for example, www.redirect.pizza or just redirect.pizza. This consistency can be a good thing for user experience and brand building.

The benefits of redirecting traffic from a root domain to a www. subdomain

These days, the “www” is no longer a necessary prefix. But there can be some situations in which you could benefit from using a www. subdomain. Especially when you redirect your root domain to this www. subdomain.

Tradition and trust

Even though most users are unfamiliar with the history of the “www.” prepend, it’s something we’re all used to seeing. For decades, every URL on the web started with these same three letters. So because of this familiarity, the sight of the “www” could very likely create a feeling of trust with website users. This also means that users could be less trusting of websites without the “www.” prepend. When you redirect your root domain to your www. subdomain, everyone will automatically see the most trusted version of your URL.

Work around the limitations of your DNS provider

By redirecting your root domain to your www. subdomain, you can work around certain limitations of DNS specifications. The limitations have to do with types of DNS records that help route traffic correctly. The CNAME (Canonical Name) record and A (Address) record are two of such types that are important when redirecting non-www to www.

A CNAME record is used to redirect one domain alias to another. So, for instance, when you have a website with the domain www.example.com, you can use a CNAME record to ensure that example.org is redirected to it. An A record, on the other hand, is used to map to the domain’s corresponding IP address. This ensures that when someone types in your domain, it redirects them to the server where your website is hosted.

Because of the limitations in the DNS specifications, the use of a CNAME record for the root domain is not supported. To work around this problem, an A record can be set at the root domain. This enables you to redirect from non-www to www. By doing so, both variants can function properly.

But here you’ll come across another problem. Many host providers require a CNAME record to redirect to a subdomain. So this means that your root domain, which is using an A record, can’t be hosted directly there.

Fortunately, this problem can be solved by using a redirect service such as redirect.pizza. With redirect.pizza, your root domain can be hosted by us on our A record, while your www. subdomain can still be hosted by your website provider with a CNAME record. With this setup, you’ll make sure your website visitor will always experience seamless accessibility, regardless of the version of the domain they use.

How redirect.pizza can help

Using a dedicated domain redirect tool, such as redirect.pizza, can help you send all traffic to one version of your website. With redirect.pizza comes, you can set up these redirects in no-time.  

Set up once and forget about it

redirect.pizza comes with an easy-to-use interface. Setting up a redirect is done in no time. You can just add a redirect once, and let us take care of the rest. You can just forget all about it. Even things such as SSL certificates are automatically renewed.

The interface also keeps an overview of all incoming hits, so in just one glance you can see how all your redirects are doing.

Path forwarding & matching

Our tool enables path forwarding, so all your existing paths from the root domain will be kept and used in the www. subdomain. This enables you to redirect complete paths from the root domain to your www. subdomain.

High-performance redirect service

With redirect.pizza your redirects are always managed efficiently. We make sure all traffic lands on an appropriate destination. And we provide the fastest redirects possible with guaranteed responsiveness. This is done through our high-performance edge network, minimizing latency, and enhancing the overall user experience.

Working with redirect.pizza also means you won’t have to host anything on your own hosting environment. So you’ll save yourself from extra server management overhead.

Built-in analytics

redirect.pizza comes with a built-in analytic tool. With this tool, you’ll be able to analyze your data in more detail. You’ll gain insight into data covering things such as the amounts of hits per period, traffic sources, traffic destinations, traffic type, top 10 countries of your visitors, top 10 referrers, 50 best-performing URLs, and more. With the help of this extensive analysis, you’ll be able to make decisions based on actual usage data. And, to ensure you’re always up to date, we’ll regularly send you a summary email with the most important insights about your redirects.