something forces my site to non-www

no idea who removes the www

[MerlinSilk]

Hello,
I wonder if somebody could help me solve a mystery: something forces the site example.com to be to be without the www. Even if I type it into the address bar in Chrome, firefox or IE, the www disappears when I hit the enter key and the page is displayed.
I could not find anything in the apache 2.0 configuration that would do this, webmaster took has no setting for this. What could cause that?
Thanks,
Merlin

[edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 3:50 pm (utc) on Mar 3, 2011]
[edit reason] exemplified the domain [/edit]

[rocknbil]

This is either a configuration at the hosting level or a mod_rewrite rule in .htaccess at the root of your domain. In either case it's a good thing that it's one or the other, your site's position in the serps is not divided among two different URL's - which is how the SE's would see them. The 301 redirect to one or the other puts all the weight in one URL for identical content, which is what you want.

[KJBweb]

What script is the site running upon, are you sure the script is configured to run upon the "www" version of the domain and not the "non-www" version?

Furthermore, have you checked any .htaccess rules that could be rewriting these requests?

SEO wise, your current situation is better than having both enabled; decide on either "www" or "non-www" and rewrite either accordingly using .htaccess rules.

[JAB Creations]

Access your site's FTP, copy the .htaccess file (-a is the filter to display hidden files if you don't see it listed). If after temporarily removing the .htaccess file your site still redirects then it's a scripting language. If it does stop redirecting post the code inside the .htaccess file. Don't forget to put it back and be very careful about changing it until you've gained the knack for editing Apache configuration. I would recommend testing locally on your personal computer using XAMPP which is an out-of-the-box solution, you can access the local server once you set it up at h t t p : / / localhost / (without spaces).

- John