Canonical URLs for Meteor
This package was inspired by the force-ssl package that comes with Meteor. Whereas force-ssl only forwards your site to https if your site visitor goes to http, meteor-canonical will forward to whatever url you want - in particlar, to www.yoursite.com if someone visits just yoursite.com. This is important for your SEO because you don't want your site/content being found at both www and non-www.
Note: Unless you pass additional options, this package does nothing locally. And you will need to set an environment variable in the environment you deploy to.
The difference is that it redirects the user to the site's ROOT_URL, if set, should they access the site from any other URL to which it responds.
ROOT_URL should follow the format given in the Meteor documentation: for example, http://example.com or https://example.com.
This means you can get the functionality of force-ssl in addition if your ROOT_URL's protocol is https.
This package does nothing if you have no ROOT_URL set. If you do, however, it must be a fully-qualified URL. If you omit the http:// or https://, it will break your site.
Additional options (environment variables)
Run meteor in the following style to use these:
PACKAGE_CANONICAL_DISABLE=true meteor
Change the VARIABLE=value parts before meteor to use different environment variables. You can also set the ROOT_URL for Meteor this way. Separate different environment variables with a space.
PACKAGE_CANONICAL_DISABLE: Set to true to never redirect anyone.
PACKAGE_CANONICAL_SIMULATE_PRODUCTION: Set to true if you want to test that the package is working locally. You will have to set up another way to access your app; for example, you might edit your hosts file. If this variable is set, then canonical will redirect to the ROOT_URL when you access your local app via the alternate URL. You will also want to set ROOT_URL when you run meteor, as illustrated above.
Package sponsored by:
Project Ricochet: drupal development, node js, phonegap, and Meteor JS development experts
Pushpin Planner: Resource planning software and ERP software for agile teams