When you are saying “search engine”, are you sure you don’t actually mean “browser address bar”?
Basically, you need to change the DNS entry for your domain name. Whoever is running your nameservers (could be your registrar, could be your host, could be a third party) has a list of which names go to which ip addresses, and right now, the only one that is set up is the “www” prefix. You could add the “no prefix option” to route to your webpage, or, if the webpage is all you need to do with the domain name, you can probably tell the nameserver to route all prefixes to that computer. In this way, whateveryoutype.hypotheticalsitename.com would get routed as well.
This could be any number of things, but one way to find out is to do an nslookup (or just ping) both the root address (without the www) and the subdomain (with the www). If they both resolve to the same IP, then the problem is with the webserver, which is serving files from different locations based on the domain name specified in the browser request. This is pretty common, webhosts will often use one webserver with a single IP and keep accounts seperate based on the incoming domain name. If this is the case they simply need to add your root domain to this list, or alter it if it exists to be consistent with the www subdomain.
If the IP’s resolve differently, then you somehow ended up with dns entries for your root domain and subdomain that resolve to different addresses and whoever maintains your nameserver should be able to clear that up.
In either case, it’s probably something your host can fix for you, or if you manage your own webserver you’ll have to consult the documentation a bit. In IIS they’re called “host headers” and you can add them per virtual server, for apache it will be a directive in your httpd.conf depending on the version.
This only applies if the domain in question already points to the same IP, and if that machine is running Apache, and if the OP has any capability to alter the Apache config.
The entire situation can be solved in a few lines of the given .htaccess of the root world-readable folder, bit it public_html, www or what have you. Apache runs on most of the web servers in the world - you usually pay a premium for a windows server, in fact, so I feel it was a reasonable assumption.
And just to make it clear - it is not necessary to make any alteration to the apache config file. It can be done in .htaccess.
I should be more clear. My ability to make changes is limited (so far as I know) to logging on godaddy.com or buydomains.com and twiddling my DNS settings. I’m not hosting my own sites at all – the blogs are both on Typepad.
And I have no idea what a .htaccess is, but that’s my own damn-fool ignorance.
I see. .htaccess iss just a per-directory configuration file you can have on your server. For most situations, as long as you have permission to write in that directory, you have a lot of leeway in what you can do. But given this, I have to revert to the walrus.
You are assuming an awful lot. We don’t yet even know if the OP’s two domains are pointing to the same place. And even if he’s running Apache, we don’t know if .htaccess is enabled or if he can change it.