301 redirect root domain to www subdomain on godaddy windows hosting account

Question

If I type in domain.com and www.domain.com, they both show the same website, but show different urls in the address bar. I'd like visitors and search engines that just type "domain.com" to be redirected to "www.domain.com".

I'm using IIS 7 on a godaddy hosting account. How do I redirect all requests for "domain.com" to "www.domain.com"?

I have the default DNS setup, "domain.com" as my "A record" and the cname "www" points to my "A record".

Solution

You can't do this with the GoDaddy domain management tools, and I don't think you can from the server tools either. If you really want this feature, you can do it dynamically with ASP.Net by writing some code like this (assuming you have a default.aspx page):

<script runat="server">
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
   if (Request.Url == "http://mysite.com")
   {
      Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
      Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.mysite.com");
   }
}
</script>

Comments

[Greg]

Bummer on Godaddy, but thanks for the info! If I don't do this, will it affect my PageRank?

[user1124702]

It shouldn't. If you want to be sure, you can use the Google for Webmasters tools and tell Google to only pay attention to the www. Also, to be sure, make sure inbound links use www.

[Bill]

not sure that .htaccess is going to be too useful in IIS7..

[David]

This should be handled at the web server level (that is, in IIS), not in the application itself. You do not want to write your code in such a way that it cares what the URL is.