Do we Really Need to Keep Typing www?
I'll admit it, I'm the kind of programmer who'll spend 10 hours writing some code to do a job that would only have taken 2 hours to do anyway. This isn't because I'm stupid (well... maybe a little), but more because I just like writing programs and it'll usually teach me something new. I also have a notion that if I'm going to do something once, I'm probably going to have to do it again at some point, so the next time it'll only take a few seconds because I have a program to do it.
Even though I will happily spend hours writing software that I didn't really need to do, I don't like to waste my time on something that to me seems pointless. Even small insignificant things which in the long run probably have no real impact on my time anyway. I'm kinda strange like that.
One of these small insignificant things is typing out the "www." before a web address. Saving myself the milliseconds it would take to type that out is a big deal for me, because I don't see what the point of me typing it out is. It's redundant information and can simply be implied. Yet all the time I'm coming across sites which will not work if you miss off those four characters at the beginning. This ends up costing my time since I won't realise until the request times out, and then I need to type out the "www." anyway in order to get it work. There's no real excuse for a site to behave this way, it's just rude.
Just before the holidays I wanted to book a train ticket back home, so I opened up my browser and typed "thetrainline.co.uk", hit enter and expected the site to pop right up. But it didn't, instead it timed out. So figuring the site was down I typed "virgintrains.co.uk" instead, hit enter and the site popped right up. I then went ahead and bought my train tickets home.
Later on however, I wanted to check some train times, so I went back to try the trainline, and discovered that the site wasn't down at all, it's just it will only work if you type "www.thetrainline.co.uk".
I've no idea on the trainline's business model, but I would imagine they make at least some of their money from selling the actual train tickets. Because their site doesn't work without the "www." they lost a sale from me. Maybe I'm the only person in the entire world who types URLs this way, and so it would only be my sale that was lost, but one sale is still one sale. However, if a lot of people type their URLs the same way as me, then it could end up being quite a bit of cash that's being lost.
There's no reason for only one of the URLs to work. It's not like they're using the one without the www for something else. It just timed out. It's a tiny piece of site configuration, but if you leave it out then it can cost you visitors and sales.
I did some searching around, but couldn't find a conclusive answer to this. The only remotely sensible reason I came across is that back in the early days of the world wide web, it was used to distinguish the web site of a domain from the FTP server or mail server (which would be ftp.example.com and mail.example.com, etc). So it seems to be nothing more than a convention that caught on.
One of my personal thoughts on the matter is that it was a way to tell people that what they were looking at was an address for the World Wide Web. In the early days of the internet if you'd seen something like "jurassicpark.com" on the bottom of a movie poster, it wouldn't have been obvious what it was. Is it the name of the production company?, something that got printed by accident? Adding the "www." to the beginning made it immediately obvious to everyone that this was something to do with the internet or World Wide Web.
Despite this mainstream use of "www." in domains, there is no technical reason why it's there. There's nothing in the HTTP specification that requires the use of "www.", it's simply a standard that caught on.You can host an FTP/mail/SSH/web/news server all on the same domain since these services all use different ports. If you need them to connect to different machines, then yes, maybe you would perhaps need a separate domain to use in the DNS records, but there's nothing stopping you just using example.com for a normal website.
So should you use "http://www.example.com" or "http://example.com" for you site? Well, the answer is both, at least from the users' point of view. Make one the actual home page for your site, and just make sure the other one redirects (using a 301 redirect) to the correct one. That way, no matter what the user types into their browser, they'll get to the site.
But then which one is going to be the home page and which one is going to redirect? Some people see this as a non-question saying that it doesn't matter. Well, that's not always the case. The choice you make for this can have big impacts depending on how your site is set up.
You could make the same page appear for both rather than redirecting, but this can have negative impacts on your search rankings. Search engines may think www.example.com and example.com are actually separate sites, so it will appear twice. Google Webmaster Tools will show you if that's the case and generally they'll just pick one, but it could cause problems with other search engines.
There are advantages and disadvantages of both ways and it all depends on what your site is really used for, or your personal preference. For me, I prefer to not use the "www.", but that's because I don't use cookies on this domain. At the end of the day, if you don't have any major reasons for using one over the other, then it doesn't really matter so long as you stay consistent.
Without the "www." cookies will be served on all subdomains. This may be the behaviour you want, or it may not. So you would need to analyse this for your own site and decide the best approach. By including the "www." it means subdomains can have different cookies from the main site, whereas without it, all cookies set on the main domain will propagate to all the subdomains.
Why does this matter? Well, if you intend to serve static data then you'll need a cookieless subdomain. If you've gone for the option without the "www." then you won't be able to do this, and instead you'll need to use a completely separate domain name. So pick wisely.
Microblogging is big. Yes, I'm talking about Twitter. Everyone and their dog seems to use twitter, and people will often want to link to places. Having four less characters to type can mean the difference between some free publicity for your domain on twitter, or someone using a URL shortener because your URL is too long. Since most URLs are generally too long anyway, if you don't use the "www." you could even implement your own URL shortener. A little free publicity never hurt anyone.
It all boils down to this; a list of some top tips for web developers with regards to "www.",
It's the little touches like this which could make the difference between a visitor, or someone who goes elsewhere. It's probably not going to lose you many customers, but every little helps in making people's lives less irritating.
If you follow the tips, then no matter whether someone bothers to type those extra four characters or not, they'll still be able to get to your site or order their train tickets home without hassle!
Even though I will happily spend hours writing software that I didn't really need to do, I don't like to waste my time on something that to me seems pointless. Even small insignificant things which in the long run probably have no real impact on my time anyway. I'm kinda strange like that.
One of these small insignificant things is typing out the "www." before a web address. Saving myself the milliseconds it would take to type that out is a big deal for me, because I don't see what the point of me typing it out is. It's redundant information and can simply be implied. Yet all the time I'm coming across sites which will not work if you miss off those four characters at the beginning. This ends up costing my time since I won't realise until the request times out, and then I need to type out the "www." anyway in order to get it work. There's no real excuse for a site to behave this way, it's just rude.
A story of woe
Just before the holidays I wanted to book a train ticket back home, so I opened up my browser and typed "thetrainline.co.uk", hit enter and expected the site to pop right up. But it didn't, instead it timed out. So figuring the site was down I typed "virgintrains.co.uk" instead, hit enter and the site popped right up. I then went ahead and bought my train tickets home.
Later on however, I wanted to check some train times, so I went back to try the trainline, and discovered that the site wasn't down at all, it's just it will only work if you type "www.thetrainline.co.uk".
I've no idea on the trainline's business model, but I would imagine they make at least some of their money from selling the actual train tickets. Because their site doesn't work without the "www." they lost a sale from me. Maybe I'm the only person in the entire world who types URLs this way, and so it would only be my sale that was lost, but one sale is still one sale. However, if a lot of people type their URLs the same way as me, then it could end up being quite a bit of cash that's being lost.
There's no reason for only one of the URLs to work. It's not like they're using the one without the www for something else. It just timed out. It's a tiny piece of site configuration, but if you leave it out then it can cost you visitors and sales.
Why do we use "www." anyway?
I did some searching around, but couldn't find a conclusive answer to this. The only remotely sensible reason I came across is that back in the early days of the world wide web, it was used to distinguish the web site of a domain from the FTP server or mail server (which would be ftp.example.com and mail.example.com, etc). So it seems to be nothing more than a convention that caught on.
One of my personal thoughts on the matter is that it was a way to tell people that what they were looking at was an address for the World Wide Web. In the early days of the internet if you'd seen something like "jurassicpark.com" on the bottom of a movie poster, it wouldn't have been obvious what it was. Is it the name of the production company?, something that got printed by accident? Adding the "www." to the beginning made it immediately obvious to everyone that this was something to do with the internet or World Wide Web.
Despite this mainstream use of "www." in domains, there is no technical reason why it's there. There's nothing in the HTTP specification that requires the use of "www.", it's simply a standard that caught on.You can host an FTP/mail/SSH/web/news server all on the same domain since these services all use different ports. If you need them to connect to different machines, then yes, maybe you would perhaps need a separate domain to use in the DNS records, but there's nothing stopping you just using example.com for a normal website.
To "www." or not to "www."?
So should you use "http://www.example.com" or "http://example.com" for you site? Well, the answer is both, at least from the users' point of view. Make one the actual home page for your site, and just make sure the other one redirects (using a 301 redirect) to the correct one. That way, no matter what the user types into their browser, they'll get to the site.
But then which one is going to be the home page and which one is going to redirect? Some people see this as a non-question saying that it doesn't matter. Well, that's not always the case. The choice you make for this can have big impacts depending on how your site is set up.
You could make the same page appear for both rather than redirecting, but this can have negative impacts on your search rankings. Search engines may think www.example.com and example.com are actually separate sites, so it will appear twice. Google Webmaster Tools will show you if that's the case and generally they'll just pick one, but it could cause problems with other search engines.
There are advantages and disadvantages of both ways and it all depends on what your site is really used for, or your personal preference. For me, I prefer to not use the "www.", but that's because I don't use cookies on this domain. At the end of the day, if you don't have any major reasons for using one over the other, then it doesn't really matter so long as you stay consistent.
What if the site uses cookies?
Without the "www." cookies will be served on all subdomains. This may be the behaviour you want, or it may not. So you would need to analyse this for your own site and decide the best approach. By including the "www." it means subdomains can have different cookies from the main site, whereas without it, all cookies set on the main domain will propagate to all the subdomains.
Why does this matter? Well, if you intend to serve static data then you'll need a cookieless subdomain. If you've gone for the option without the "www." then you won't be able to do this, and instead you'll need to use a completely separate domain name. So pick wisely.
Microreasons
Microblogging is big. Yes, I'm talking about Twitter. Everyone and their dog seems to use twitter, and people will often want to link to places. Having four less characters to type can mean the difference between some free publicity for your domain on twitter, or someone using a URL shortener because your URL is too long. Since most URLs are generally too long anyway, if you don't use the "www." you could even implement your own URL shortener. A little free publicity never hurt anyone.
Summary
It all boils down to this; a list of some top tips for web developers with regards to "www.",
- Make your site work both including and excluding the "www.".
- Since including the "www." is social convention, you should make sure that users are sent to the same place if they include it or not, they shouldn't be sent to a different site if they miss off the "www." as that will just confuse matters.
- Pick one URL to use as the main destination, and redirect the other URL(s) to it. This way, all of the URLs to your site should stay consistent.
- Use a 301 redirect as this tells search engines that it's a permanent redirect and that both URLs are actually for the same thing. This should preserve your rankings and keep things consistent.
- If you want to use a cookieless subdomain for static data, then you need to use the "www." for your main site
- If possible with your domain structure (some websites use subdomains for other things, and that's fine) also try to make "w.domain.com" and "ww.domain.com" point to the main site. This will catch anyone who makes a typo. It takes very little time to setup and can save someone even a few seconds of grief when they realise their typing mistake.
It's the little touches like this which could make the difference between a visitor, or someone who goes elsewhere. It's probably not going to lose you many customers, but every little helps in making people's lives less irritating.
If you follow the tips, then no matter whether someone bothers to type those extra four characters or not, they'll still be able to get to your site or order their train tickets home without hassle!
