www - To use or not

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Dennis
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www - To use or not

Post by Dennis »

Hello,

After switching to a hosting provider that provides (free) certificates so now my 5 hosted domains are https and I'm preparing to print some flyers with QR Codes along with checking all the HTML links in my websites for consistency, I'm torn with the decision to use "www" in the domain name or not.

I tried Googling the question, but failed to get a decisive answer. I have learned the importance of sticking with the decided choice, but that dosen't help with the decision.

What are your thoughts?
Dennis
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Albert Wiersch
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Re: www - To use or not

Post by Albert Wiersch »

Hi Dennis,

I did some brief research on this too and there does not seem to be a definitive answer other than to be sure to pick one and stick to it (be consistent).

I used to go with "www" for websites but if I were to choose nowadays then I would seriously consider leaving it off for simplicity and because it's not as commonly used anymore. Browsers often don't even show the full URL anymore anyway, and many leave off (hide) the "www" part of the URL (although I like to tell the browser to show me the full URL (but most people probably don't set/use that option) ).

I think if I were deciding today that I would probably not use "www", but you should be able to go either way as long as you stay consistent and either use "www" all the time or never use "www".

Oh, and of course make sure your webserver redirects to either the "www" url or the non-"www" url depending on what you decide to use. You should not have the same page at both www.domain.com/page.html and domain.com/page.html . Choose which URL you want it to be and then if someone tries to access the other URL then have the server do a 301 (permanent) redirect to the correct URL.
Albert Wiersch, CSS HTML Validator Developer • Download CSS HTML Validator FREE Trial
Dennis
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Re: www - To use or not

Post by Dennis »

Albert,

Thanks for your feedback.

Dennis
Mozzy
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Re: www - To use or not

Post by Mozzy »

Most early websites had www as the beginning of their address to distinguish them from other types of Internet services (like ftp or gopher) that people were already using. Within a few years the Web largely made those obsolete, while at the same time browsers got smart enough to be able to resolve whatever service they were pointed to regardless of whether they had been give the appropriate protocol in advance. So it became less common (although most big companies still have www addresses that point to their same homepage). I remember back in the late ‘90’s I worked customer service for a company that sold a major information database product which was accessible on the Web with a non-www address. And people were constantly assuming you needed to put the w’s in there, and then calling to ask why they couldn’t get the page.
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