why do some websites require you to type www?

[user1397]

And others dont?

[kevin11951]

Dns

[murderslastcrow]

Because they suck horribly. D:<

[sandyd]

Because they suck horribly. D:<
they haven't set their DNS properly.

It is kind of a terminology thing anyways.
WWW stands for world wide web, and theirs simply some people who want to get technical, and require the use of www on their sites....

[YuiDaoren]

There are domains that don't re-direct or resolve to the web server?

Weird.

No idea why anyone would do that. Seems pointless to make extra work for their customers.

[nilarimogard]

Some have no idea how to redirect their www to domain.com or the other way around :D

[Joeb454]

Some have no idea how to redirect their www to domain.com or the other way around :D

Then there's some - like this very forum - which automatically strip out the "www."

[lz1dsb]

I also think that it's all about DNS record for a particular site. Here's how it looks for a site that have www added to the DNS record:

~$ nslookup
> dir.bg
Server: 212.50.10.50
Address: 212.50.10.50#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: dir.bg
Address: 194.145.63.12
> www.dir.bg
Server: 212.50.10.50
Address: 212.50.10.50#53

Non-authoritative answer:
www.dir.bg canonical name = dir.bg.
Name: dir.bg
Address: 194.145.63.12

Cheers,
Boyan

[Spice Weasel]

The www is pointless. It's just easier for people who are computer illiterate to type "www.ubuntu.com" rather than "http://ubuntu.com". For some reason.

[Spr0k3t]

I believe the moniker www was officially deprecated in 1999 with the transitional html 3.2. The correct method to handle the now defunct www is to remove the subdomain completely and redirect to the domain.

[MechaMechanism]

I believe the moniker www was officially deprecated in 1999 with the transitional html 3.2. The correct method to handle the now defunct www is to remove the subdomain completely and redirect to the domain.
Yep, nothing dates a site like the www.

[koenn]

in "www.example.com", example.com is a domain name and refers to a name space; 'www' is an actual hostname, so www.example.com uniqly defines a host - a server, or, in the case of webserver virtual hosts, a website. So the www is an essential part of the URI.

Allowing a domain name (without the host part, so example.com) to resolve to a host (www.example.com) is, at best, a sane default, assuming that the most popular server in the domain is the web server. It kinda ignores the fact that the domain will at least also have name servers (often ns.example.com), and most likely mail servers, and some others (ftp.example.com, downloads.example.com, ...).



At some point, it became common to name (or at least alias) webservers 'www', but they might as wel be called 'server17' or 'john'.

So, contrary to what someone posted before, it's probably the more computer literate people, who understand URIs and DNS, or gained there internet experience in the 90s, whe tend to use www.example.org i.s.o. example.org in web addresses


Although it may be so that the practice of defaulting a domain to its webserver is now a recommended practice - maybe I missed that meeting.



I believe the moniker www was officially deprecated in 1999 with the transitional html 3.2. The correct method to handle the now defunct www is to remove the subdomain completely and redirect to the domain.
I doubt that a language specification for text file markup would prescribe the recommended network configuration, hostname, and name resolution mechanism for the host where those text files are stored.
But I could be wrong.
Any references ?

[spjackson]

I believe the moniker www was officially deprecated in 1999 with the transitional html 3.2. The correct method to handle the now defunct www is to remove the subdomain completely and redirect to the domain.
I note that w3.org does not appear to be aware of this: it redirects to www.w3.org (http://www.w3.org).

[Dr. C]

I believe the moniker www was officially deprecated in 1999 with the transitional html 3.2. The correct method to handle the now defunct www is to remove the subdomain completely and redirect to the domain.

Is there a RFC or other reference for this or just a movement to get rid of the www. Interesting ubuntu.com does it one way and ubuntuforums.org does it the other.