Why is it that some urls require "www." to be in front and others are more forgiving?

Question

I notice on some websites that if I type in "domainname.com" it loads fine, but on others, it gives me an error unless I type "www.domainname.com". Why is that?

Answer 1

WWW indicates that the server is using the HTTP protocol. When typing in a website name, the default assumption your browser makes is (a) It's http and (b) it's on port 80. So www has had no real use for a long time now. It's just redundant, as the entire website is on www.

However, having the www subdomain exists for historical reasons, so many servers are not configured to just have http://example.com as opposed to http://www.example.com .

Why do some websites require www? Because they weren't configured to simply rely on domainname.com.

Answer 2

By default, most web servers host at the subdomain www as the root. This is not always the case, sometimes you can have mail.mywebsite.com and www.mywebsite.com. In those scenarios, the admin can configure www to be the default implied subdomain, or choose not to have an implied subdomain. If no subdomain is implied, then you have to specify the full address.

Answer 3

The domain administrator can do everyone the kindness of setting up an "alias" for "domainname.com" in the domain name server. If the administrator does so, then everyone will be able to get to www.domainname.com via the "alias" domainname.com

Answer 4

It depends on how the company's DNS administrator decides to do it. www is suppose to stand for world wide web and your website goes here, but overtime, people have gotten lazy and just want to put in domain.com

Answer 5

I've seen some web sites use the same name so you probably have to use the search bar for general information perhaps?

Answer 6

donno, googlre is more forgiving