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Published Website But It Doesn't Come Up Unless I type www in front of it. - Help!

I am getting ready to launch my Square Online shopping site.  I did a temporary publish to see if any kinks.  I typed my .com in and it says it can't be found.  I went in and unpublished it to take a look at my site preferences, check domain name, etc.  As far as I can tell everything looks fine. 

 

I published it again and realized the box that comes up for me that says I published my site has www. in front of my shop name.  I left it published and tried just putting my .com in and it said couldn't be found again.  Then I typed www. and then my .com and it works.  

 

How do I get rid of having to type www?  Most people are just going to Google my shoppe name and not put www in front of it first.   What did I do wrong, what am I missing?

 

Thx! Kim

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Thank you for the compliment.  We have fun here and our customers seem to approve!  Anyway…

 

I did an ICANN search on your domain.  You may have thought that you transferred the domain to Square Online, but right now domain.com is still your registrar of record.  Since that is the case, the problem here is probably that your name servers and such are not set correctly to point to Square.  Hence your inability to find the site via the non www URL.  

 

Before I go further, allow me to clarify a few terms here.  Your domain (redranchshoppes.com) has both a registrar (domain.com) and a host for your website.  Yes, Square is your site host, but that’s it — it is NOT your registrar.  You can do a couple of things here.

 

First, go to your online dashboard > Online > Website > Domains and check the status of any pending domain name transfer.  Most likely, if you did initiate that, it failed, and you might need to try again.  Here’s the help document for doing the transfer.  Having Square handle both is definitely more seamless, but it is not required.  

 

Alternatively, if you want to leave the registration where it is, then you have to go to domain.com, sign in to your account, and make some changes.  Here’s a link to a help article outlining the steps to connect a site registered with a third party ...  

 

This all seems a little complicated, I know, but it is easily enough resolved.  In the end, this is just caused by a little confusion about how TCP/IP (internet communication protocols) works and trust me even the experts get confused by this sometimes.  It is 50-year old technology after all!

 

Figure out how you want to proceed and go through those steps.  And please do not hesitate to reach out here if you hit a wall or need to ask questions.  I’ll be watching for this post topic in my email and get back to you ASAP.

 

Lastly, if you want, you can unpublish your site now.  I don’t need to see that anymore.

 

Chip

If my answer resolves your issue, please take a minute to mark it as Best Answer. That helps people who find this thread in the future.

Piper’s Ice Cream Bar, Covington KY USA
Website
Facebook
Click here to see a list of third-party apps I use to add functionality to my Square account!

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Thanks for your help on this.  I did do all of that back in July or August.  It took about 2 days for it to say it was successful and in my Square Overview under Domains it still says it was successful.  Ugh!  I wondered if it was something like this.  I tried to make a new email through Google with my .com and it would not work so I gave up on that for a bit.   So basically, what you are saying is to redo my redranchshoppes.com domain transfer, right? I definitely want to use it and not the Square domain.

 

Appreciate your time with this!

Kim

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Hi @redranchshoppes.  That’s pretty odd.  My Square Online website uses both interchangeably.  Can you please post the URL of your website?

 

Thanks,

Chip

If my answer resolves your issue, please take a minute to mark it as Best Answer. That helps people who find this thread in the future.

Piper’s Ice Cream Bar, Covington KY USA
Website
Facebook
Click here to see a list of third-party apps I use to add functionality to my Square account!

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Also, @redranchshoppes, who is your domain registrar?  Square, or another like GoDaddy?

Chip

If my answer resolves your issue, please take a minute to mark it as Best Answer. That helps people who find this thread in the future.

Piper’s Ice Cream Bar, Covington KY USA
Website
Facebook
Click here to see a list of third-party apps I use to add functionality to my Square account!

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Hi Chip!  Thanks for your response.  My site is redranchshoppes.com.  My domain name was purchased through domain.com but I followed the instructions and transferred it to Square Online several months ago.  When I look under Site Preferences, my URL shows as:  http://www.redranchshoppes.com    I am thinking it should have an "s" in http?...shouldn't it be https://

Is that correct?  Not sure how to fix that.

 

Thanks for any advice on this.  My page is currently back to unpublished by the way.

 

Kim

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Kim,

 

 I’m out with friends tonight. But I’ll look at this in the morning. Can you please publish the site again of you see this before morning. I’ll get back with you as soon as I can. 

Chip

If my answer resolves your issue, please take a minute to mark it as Best Answer. That helps people who find this thread in the future.

Piper’s Ice Cream Bar, Covington KY USA
Website
Facebook
Click here to see a list of third-party apps I use to add functionality to my Square account!

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Thanks Chip.  It's published.  It does come up now as https:// but I still can't get it to come up by just typing in red ranch shoppes or redranchshoppes.com.  I still have to enter www.redranchshoppes.com 

 

Maybe it's an SEO situation.  I'm working on that and trying to learn more.

I just don't want my friends/family that know my business name to Google my store name and it not pull up.  I shouldn't have to tell people to type in www. first. If people that know me can't pull it up, then someone across the country isn't going to find me!  Yikes!  

 

Your ice cream store site looks nice by the way!

 

Kim

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Thank you for the compliment.  We have fun here and our customers seem to approve!  Anyway…

 

I did an ICANN search on your domain.  You may have thought that you transferred the domain to Square Online, but right now domain.com is still your registrar of record.  Since that is the case, the problem here is probably that your name servers and such are not set correctly to point to Square.  Hence your inability to find the site via the non www URL.  

 

Before I go further, allow me to clarify a few terms here.  Your domain (redranchshoppes.com) has both a registrar (domain.com) and a host for your website.  Yes, Square is your site host, but that’s it — it is NOT your registrar.  You can do a couple of things here.

 

First, go to your online dashboard > Online > Website > Domains and check the status of any pending domain name transfer.  Most likely, if you did initiate that, it failed, and you might need to try again.  Here’s the help document for doing the transfer.  Having Square handle both is definitely more seamless, but it is not required.  

 

Alternatively, if you want to leave the registration where it is, then you have to go to domain.com, sign in to your account, and make some changes.  Here’s a link to a help article outlining the steps to connect a site registered with a third party ...  

 

This all seems a little complicated, I know, but it is easily enough resolved.  In the end, this is just caused by a little confusion about how TCP/IP (internet communication protocols) works and trust me even the experts get confused by this sometimes.  It is 50-year old technology after all!

 

Figure out how you want to proceed and go through those steps.  And please do not hesitate to reach out here if you hit a wall or need to ask questions.  I’ll be watching for this post topic in my email and get back to you ASAP.

 

Lastly, if you want, you can unpublish your site now.  I don’t need to see that anymore.

 

Chip

If my answer resolves your issue, please take a minute to mark it as Best Answer. That helps people who find this thread in the future.

Piper’s Ice Cream Bar, Covington KY USA
Website
Facebook
Click here to see a list of third-party apps I use to add functionality to my Square account!

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Thanks for your help on this.  I did do all of that back in July or August.  It took about 2 days for it to say it was successful and in my Square Overview under Domains it still says it was successful.  Ugh!  I wondered if it was something like this.  I tried to make a new email through Google with my .com and it would not work so I gave up on that for a bit.   So basically, what you are saying is to redo my redranchshoppes.com domain transfer, right? I definitely want to use it and not the Square domain.

 

Appreciate your time with this!

Kim

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Kim,

 

No do not do the transfer again if it says it is successful.  There’s no need.  Maybe Square also uses domain.com as a third-party registrar.  Let’s try a few other things.

 

Here is a link to the help document for troubleshooting your domain using Square Online.

 

Here is another about Manage Records for Square Online Domains.

 

Start with the steps outlined in those.  If that doesn’t work, most likely you’ll need to contact customer support, which I’d recommend doing by phone.  But before you do, I’ll tag a moderator here so that they can see what has been going on along with any notes to give them an idea of where to pick up.

 

Chip

If my answer resolves your issue, please take a minute to mark it as Best Answer. That helps people who find this thread in the future.

Piper’s Ice Cream Bar, Covington KY USA
Website
Facebook
Click here to see a list of third-party apps I use to add functionality to my Square account!

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@redranchshoppes Before you do anything in my previous post, do this.

 

Go to your online dashboard > Online > Website > Domains.  Click on Manage to the right of your domain, then select Manage domain.

 

Scroll down to the section for DNS Records, and at the bottom you’ll see “Reset DNS records.”  Click this and follow any instructions.  This will erase your A and HTTP302 DNS records (don’t ask!) which should reenable your www as well as other types of URL pointers.

 

Then go to your browser and try again.  Let me know, but I think this will do what you want.  I did not realize that Square domains had this capability until just the very moment!

Chip

If my answer resolves your issue, please take a minute to mark it as Best Answer. That helps people who find this thread in the future.

Piper’s Ice Cream Bar, Covington KY USA
Website
Facebook
Click here to see a list of third-party apps I use to add functionality to my Square account!

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