[Forum] Log-in from root not working

[Hummie]

I noticed that when I go to my site without the www, it comes to the site, but it does not show me as logged in. When I go to the site with the www in front, it shows me as logged in. In addition, I have trouble logging in at all on the page without the www. How do I fix this?

[Wayne Luke]

1) You can try setting your cookie domain to .example.com where example.com is actually your domain name. Note the leading period, this is very important. This doesn't work on all systems and will probably require your users to clear cookies or risk them becoming corrupted. Corruption is a big issue on all versions of IE before 9.

You can set this under Settings -> Options -> Cookie and HTTP Header Settings.

2) You can redirect the non-www url to your www url via .htaccess. This is usually the best because search engines like Google consider them to be different pages and split your linkbacks and page ranking between them.

This would look like:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Again you would have to replace example.com with your own domain name. If you already have RewriteEngine On in your .htaccess file, you do not need to include it again.

[Hummie]

Could I just do a redirect from my hosting to do the same thing and be good with search engines?

[Wayne Luke]

Sure. The redirect tool from your hosting it most likely going to just right an .htaccess file anyway. The fact that it is a 301 redirect will get the search engines to the right place.

[Hummie]

Thanks for your help. The httaccess fixed my problems.