Have example.com, would it be prudent to point example.net to the same IP?

[born2run]

Hi,

I own example.com and example.net. Would it be prudent to point example.net to the same IP as example.com?

Someone mentioned it's not advisable. What's the best method for this?

Any advice would be appreciated much!

Kip

[edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 2:17 pm (utc) on Dec 21, 2013]
[edit reason] Using example.com [/edit]

[rowtc2]

I think is ok to redirect the index to your current online site.

[aakk9999]

You can point it so that both .com and .net resolve to the same IP, but you must implement redirect at the same time so that any request for any URL on .net domain redirects to the equivalent URL on your .com domain otherwise you will create duplicate of your .com domain content on the .net domain.

If your .htaccess follows the best practices then this should already be catered for.

Best practices for non-www to www redirection is something alongside the following lines: if the host is not www.example.com then redirect to www.example.com, which means that www.example.net would nicely redirect to www.example.com without a need to add new rules.

However you MUST test the redirect properly, not just for the domain root, but test that any URL on .com domain, if you replace .com with .net, will redirect to .com. It is so easy to leak large number of URLs to Google and so difficult and time consuming to remove them.

[lucy24]

Option B is a completely different approach depending on your individual needs:

Keep dot net on a different server using a different DNS. Redirect any request for dot net except the front page to the same page in dot com. If your "real" site, dot com, is ever down, type-ins may then say "Uhm, maybe I got it wrong, let me try net" and then they get to dot net's front page.

Admittedly this scenario is more likely if the primary is something other than dot com.

[Dymero]

but you must implement redirect at the same time so that any request for any URL on .net domain redirects to the equivalent URL on your .com

I actually think this is pretty good advice that doesn't often get employed, and it's crucial if you're moving your site. However, in practice, I can think of no big site that doesn't just 301 redirect the .net or .org of their domain to the main page of the .com.