Do you "www."?

[Unorthodox]

Do you type "www." before a web address.
Even though you don't have to, I still do

Why do they even have "www." anyway? What purpose does it serve?

"If you need me I'll be on world wide web dot mac rumors dot com!"

 

[cbetta]

strangely I know some websites that serve a different page on www and without-www. In fact, www is just a subdomain of the main page, and most sites recognize this is as the default, but when a server is configured otherwise, it might lead to different pages.

 

[Unorthodox]

strangely I know some websites that serve a different page on www and without-www. In fact, www is just a subdomain of the main page, and most sites recognize this is as the default, but when a server is configured otherwise, it might lead to different pages.

Oh.
This poll is kinda pointless now, I guess...

 

[nbs2]

This poll is kinda pointless now, I guess...

Unless, like me, you didn't know that...

I only do if i know (or i find out) that the site doesn't want to load w/o the www.

 

[Cameront9]

Not only do I type "www.," I still type out "http://"

Afterall, www would be kind of pointless with out hypertext transport protocol.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

i usually don't. but some pages won't load without the www, at least on certain browsers. i think in safari it is able to process either

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

For the most part, I don't write www. Occasionally there's a site that requires it, but otherwise I don't use it.

 

[PlaceofDis]

here and there i do.
depends on the site, as others have said.

 

[timnosenzo]

I try not to. If there's one thing I miss about Windows (IE in particular), its the ability to autofill a web address by just typing in the domain name, then pressing CTRL --> Enter. It automatically fills in the http:// and the .com. So all that you need to type is macrumors into the address bar, hit CTRL --> Enter and it fills in everything else. Very cool.

Yeah, thats the only thing I miss.

 

[njmac]

no. never.

and I never type .com either.

If I know the website is .org I will type it like feedmebetter.org. If I know its a .com I just type in the name and bingo. That is the biggest reason why I will not switch to firefox. firefox guesses where you want to go - that's crazy.

 

[iMeowbot]

There is no uspto.gov, so the www. habit lives on.

What was the browser that made you type in the http:// even late in the game? Was that Mosaic?

[edit: I just dug up a copy of Mosaic and tried, and that's the one. Even the 3.0 betas from 1996 insisted on it.]

 

[SamIchi]

Nope unless the site doesn't load. And I don't think I've ever used "http://". I've stopped using ".com" too now unless needed, sometimes I unconciously still do it though.

 

[Steve1496]

I try not to. If there's one thing I miss about Windows (IE in particular), its the ability to autofill a web address by just typing in the domain name, then pressing CTRL --> Enter. It automatically fills in the http:// and the .com. So all that you need to type is macrumors into the address bar, hit CTRL --> Enter and it fills in everything else. Very cool.

Yeah, thats the only thing I miss.

Or in Safari, Firefox, and Camino, all you have to do it type "macrumors" into the address bar (minus the quotation marks) and it fills in https://www.macrumors.com.

 

[yippy]

I usually don't type www. but there are a few sites that require it in order to load.

On the flip side my university has a site that won't load if you DO put www. Of course it is actually a shortcut that redirects to a normal page so that may be why. But still, interesting, try it: http://www.express.cites.uiuc.edu does not work but express.cites.uiuc.edu does.

 

[Diavilo1]

nope, for me its "macrumors" then command+enter

 

[Doctor Q]

I remember waaaaaaaaay back when the Internet was new and I'd hear radio ads tell me to go to "h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot somewhere dot com". Some of them called it a "period" instead of a "dot". The worst of them goofed and said "backslash backslash", a mistake that has always puzzled me but I still here now and then.

Then people got used to those weird http:// prefixes and web browsers learned to fill them in for you too. So ads would say to visit "w w w dot somewhere dot com".

Later, that evolved into "somewhere dot com" since almost all businesses direct the subdomain to the main site or vice versa, so www is almost always optional.

And lately I've heard more ads that say to visit "somewhere" on the web, no prefix, and no top-level domain, so ".com" is assumed if they don't say. Couldn't be much simpler than that!

 

[danny_w]

Or in Safari, Firefox, and Camino, all you have to do it type "macrumors" into the address bar (minus the quotation marks) and it fills in https://www.macrumors.com.

This doesn't seem to be consistent for me on Mac. On Windows, FF works just like IE, press Ctrl-Enter to autofill the http://www. and the .com parts of the address. Does Mac have a similar feature? I know that you can just put in the address (like 'macrumors') and press enter, but it doesn't always seem to do the same thing. I like know what it is going to fill in, like with Ctrl-Enter in Windows.

 

[mkrishnan]

I don't except for the sites that make me do it because of poor web setup. Of which there are one or two for my university that I use. But that usually means I try those without the www. accidentally and they fail to load. Le sigh.

 

[iSaint]

I don't. If your default search is MSN, it never works. Their search is horrible. If your default is Google, it'll find what you want every time.

 

[Glen Quagmire]

I remember waaaaaaaaay back when the Internet was new and I'd hear radio ads tell me to go to "h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot somewhere dot com". Some of them called it a "period" instead of a "dot". The worst of them goofed and said "backslash backslash", a mistake that has always puzzled me but I still here now and then.

When I first started using the web, I used to type in http:://. The browser I was using (lynx, on a HP Un*x box) kindly corrected it for me. I also called URLs "email addresses" for a time.

In my defence, this was 1995, and the internet was completely insignificant at that time.

 

[wmmk]

There is no uspto.gov, so the www. habit lives on.

What was the browser that made you type in the http:// even late in the game? Was that Mosaic?

[edit: I just dug up a copy of Mosaic and tried, and that's the one. Even the 3.0 betas from 1996 insisted on it.]

i know it's random, but i was just reading about mosaic in The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. great book. it's taught me tons about the history of computers and the internet.

 

[bousozoku]

I generally do simply because a lot of websites I've tried are shown without the www. and actually require it.

 

[crazycat]

I only www when i know a sites name, i sometimes www when doing without it does not work (sometimes it does not).

 

[MacNut]

lets say for example macrumors.com and lets say a totally different site macrumors.org? how would it tell the difference if you just typed macrumors?

 

[Yebot]

According to Netcraft, 62% of all websites are running Apache Webserver. (Most of the rest are running Microsoft's IIS *barf*). Anywho, when you config Apache there's a little text file that controls the domain and subdomains. The bit of text that controls Macrumors might look like this...

<VirtualHost 123.45.67.89>
[COLOR="Red"]ServerAlias www.macrumors.com macrumors.com[/COLOR]
DocumentRoot /home/<path to site>/public_html/www
ServerName www.macrumors.com
... other stuff ...
</VirtualHost>

The text in red is key. As long as the site admin includes the with-www and without-www, then it doesn't matter if you type it into your browser.