Re: Proper www usage

On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Linda Bellitt wrote:

> Can you tell me what parameters make it okay to drop the www when entering 
> a URI into a browser?

For http URIs: the www. prefix is just a convention: whether it's needed
or not is up to the administrators who manage the parent domain name, e.g.
example.com for www.example.com. If they have made an address record for
example.com, and the webserver at that address accepts the name, then you
can use it. Likewise for home.example.com, etc.

http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/www.html
urn:ietf:rfc:2219 = http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc2219.txt
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990321_compound.html
http://yost.com/misc/nix-on-www.html
http://domains.dantobias.com/structure/subdomains.html

For other URIs, especially non-URLs, www (if it appears at all) may be an
essential part of the URI, and removing it could create a completely
different URI.

> Does it have to do with the browser and/or its level? 

No; however some Web browsers, if unable to look up an address for a
domain name in an http URL, will prefix www. and try again.

> Does it have to do with how domain names are registered?

No, unless the registered name servers don't allow the necessary records
to be created.

> Any input would be most helpful.

hope this helps,
-- 
Daniel Biddle <deltab@osian.net>

Received on Monday, 11 June 2001 16:14:58 UTC