Custom domain working without www but not with www initially – best practice?

Technical Q&A
1

Hi everyone,

I recently connected a custom domain to my Shopify store and finished DNS + SSL setup.

The root domain (non-www) is working correctly now, but I had an earlier issue where the www version wasn’t resolving until the domain was fully connected and verified.

For reference only, this is the domain I’m referring to:
https://www.kiwishack.co.nz

My question is more about best practice going forward:

Is it recommended to keep only one primary version (www vs non-www) and let Shopify handle the redirect automatically, or is there anything else people usually check to avoid duplicate indexing?

Just want to make sure everything is clean from an SEO and user-experience point of view.

Thanks in advance.

2

You’re overthinking. Shopify automatically handles everything. Set your primary domain, set the other domains to redirect. This is the best practice. It’s not complicated.

3

Thanks for assurance, actually I had a lot of time spent on sorting out Error 1000 so just want to make sure everything is fine. Cheers.

4

hii @wendy.kelly
Set it as the Primary Domain in Shopify and let Shopify handle the automatic 301 redirects HTTPS, and canonical URLs. This prevents duplicate indexing and is fully SEO-safe.
Optionally, add both versions to Google Search Console for monitoring no extra redirects or manual SEO work needed.

5

Got it, appreciated.