No More “www”

By Daniel Miessler on November 26th, 2007: Tagged as Internet

no-www

It’s time to stop using “www” when referring to websites. It’s a waste of storage, a waste of ink, and it takes 2-5 times as long to pronounce as saying the domain by itself. Think about it: nine syllables to properly enunciate three characters. Enter no-www.

No-www is an initiative to make all websites accessible from both the http://www.example.com/ and http://example.com/ forms of their names. The reason behind it is to standardize domain names providing web content and to avoid typing unnecessary letters. — Wikipedia

The reason for using the “www” hostname prefix when entering websites is now a matter of history. It’s old, deprecated, outdated, and antiquated. Like websites that only work in Internet Explorer, sites that break when you use the domain alone should be firmly encouraged to join the 21st century.

Some argue that there is still a good reason to separate traffic destined to web servers from that destined to the domain itself. This is precisely the idea that’s become obsolete. The reason for that separation in the past was that HTTP (web traffic) used to be just one of many services that one could use for a given domain.

In other words, web traffic wasn’t particularly special so it didn’t make any sense to point it (or any other service) to the root of the domain by default.

Things are different now. Web traffic now dominates Internet use when it comes to user interaction. If someone is manually entering an address to reach a public site, the odds are very high that they’re visiting an organization’s web site rather than some other type of service. As such, directing users to an organization’s web content by default is a matter of obvious practicality. Adding the “www” has simply become superfluous.

This doesn’t mean we should abolish the use of hostnames. Hostnames are excellent tools for separating traffic and making meaningful associations with users. The argument here is simply for having the root of the domain point to the web content as a matter of convention.

So the next time you hear someone stumbling over “double-u, double-u, double-u”, just kindly inform them that it’s faster if they just go to the domain itself, and that for the majority of major sites the “www” isn’t needed anymore.:

  • Andrew

    People in the industry, who have to refer to www all the time actually pronounce it dub-dub-dub, an example of this can be heard/seen here:

    http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=136904&pvrid=201

    You will hear the Microsoft engineers refer to every Microsoft site that they run as dub-dub-dub … plus it sounds cooler calling it that.

    :-)

    As far as removing the www all together in addresses … that is a really bad idea from a technically speaking perspective (I’ve been a networker for 30 years now). As you touch in your article www was first used as a way to separate a web server from a ftp, email or the many other types of servers out there. www is technically called a hostname or tld (third level domain, not to be confused with the tld, or top level domain (.com, .net etc)). And to have it purely point to the root, may cause confusion in managing on larger systems and the DNS system.

    Most web servers, such as Apache, will allow a rewrite from the address http://www.example.com to example.com, if that is what the user wants, regardless of how things are setup at the gateway.

    Just my 1 cent.

  • Andrew

    People in the industry, who have to refer to www all the time actually pronounce it dub-dub-dub, an example of this can be heard/seen here:

    http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=136904&pvrid=201

    You will hear the Microsoft engineers refer to every Microsoft site that they run as dub-dub-dub … plus it sounds cooler calling it that.

    :-)

    As far as removing the www all together in addresses … that is a really bad idea from a technically speaking perspective (I’ve been a networker for 30 years now). As you touch in your article www was first used as a way to separate a web server from a ftp, email or the many other types of servers out there. www is technically called a hostname or tld (third level domain, not to be confused with the tld, or top level domain (.com, .net etc)). And to have it purely point to the root, may cause confusion in managing on larger systems and the DNS system.

    Most web servers, such as Apache, will allow a rewrite from the address http://www.example.com to example.com, if that is what the user wants, regardless of how things are setup at the gateway.

    Just my 1 cent.

  • Brian

    It’s faster to say “world wide web” or “Triple-U” There was an episode of “Home Movies” called “Everybody’s Entitled to My Opinion” that played around with this concept. Me? I like to pronounce it as a long “w” sound.

  • Brian

    It’s faster to say “world wide web” or “Triple-U” There was an episode of “Home Movies” called “Everybody’s Entitled to My Opinion” that played around with this concept. Me? I like to pronounce it as a long “w” sound.

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  • http://anglictina.zaridi.to/ Anglictina

    Yes, this is 100% right.

  • http://anglictina.zaridi.to Anglictina

    Yes, this is 100% right.

  • http://slashback.org/ Tim F.

    I’ve noticed a lot of reposts from you, Daniel. Are you in a blogging slump?

    Andrew,

    Internally, it’s perfectly fine to have a “www” tld (for network identification), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that your website needs to be identified (on the world wide web) by that tld. In fact, it could be quite confusing — www is too generic.

    Chances are that any web server already has a meaningful hostname, and assigning it an alternate (“www”) causes ambiguity.

    Or, let’s say I have two (or more) web servers (each of which has a meaningful hostname). To which do I assign the “www” tld?

    I really haven’t said what I’m trying to say because it’s difficult to express. Why force a “www” on people when it’s not necessary?

  • http://slashback.org/ Tim F.

    I’ve noticed a lot of reposts from you, Daniel. Are you in a blogging slump?

    Andrew,

    Internally, it’s perfectly fine to have a “www” tld (for network identification), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that your website needs to be identified (on the world wide web) by that tld. In fact, it could be quite confusing — www is too generic.

    Chances are that any web server already has a meaningful hostname, and assigning it an alternate (“www”) causes ambiguity.

    Or, let’s say I have two (or more) web servers (each of which has a meaningful hostname). To which do I assign the “www” tld?

    I really haven’t said what I’m trying to say because it’s difficult to express. Why force a “www” on people when it’s not necessary?

  • http://michaelgr.com/ Michael G.R.

    I think it’s a good idea. In fact, from day one I’ve never had “WWW” in my website url: MichaelGR.com

  • http://michaelgr.com/ Michael G.R.

    I think it’s a good idea. In fact, from day one I’ve never had “WWW” in my website url: MichaelGR.com

  • http://blog.preshweb.co.uk/ David Precious

    This again?

  • http://blog.preshweb.co.uk/ David Precious

    This again?

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  • http://almonte.com/ Brent

    The ‘www’ doesn’t really denote which protocol is being used; that’s done by the prefix, http://, ftp:// etc. So the ‘www’ is redundant, really, in an address such as http://www.foo.com. It starts with http, so we know it’s a web page.

    Conversely, it’s not unheard of to see FTP sites with www in their names: ftp://www.bar.com.

    So… I’m all for dropping the www. I think even the most inexperienced web users, were they to hear an ad or whatever stating “come by and visit us at acmewidgets.com”, would know to go their browsers and enter ‘acmewidgets.com’, and expect to arrive at a web site.

  • http://almonte.com Brent

    The ‘www’ doesn’t really denote which protocol is being used; that’s done by the prefix, http://, ftp:// etc. So the ‘www’ is redundant, really, in an address such as http://www.foo.com. It starts with http, so we know it’s a web page.

    Conversely, it’s not unheard of to see FTP sites with www in their names: ftp://www.bar.com.

    So… I’m all for dropping the www. I think even the most inexperienced web users, were they to hear an ad or whatever stating “come by and visit us at acmewidgets.com”, would know to go their browsers and enter ‘acmewidgets.com’, and expect to arrive at a web site.

  • Cyrious Garnetski

    Lets drop the ftp too. And the home. And domain names. Isn’t typing 192.168.1.1 a lot easier than typing a long domain name?

  • http://yuba-yada-yada@earthlink.net Cyrious Garnetski

    Lets drop the ftp too. And the home. And domain names. Isn’t typing 192.168.1.1 a lot easier than typing a long domain name?

  • Ugly American

    Traffic for non-trivial sites is already remapped by protocol/port anyway and has been for years. When you hit sun.com on port 80 you get one bank of servers and on port 21 you get another.

    In short, prefixes are only needed if you have an idiot admin.

    Printing and typing them are a waste of resources.

    Speaking them is a waste of time.

  • Ugly American

    Traffic for non-trivial sites is already remapped by protocol/port anyway and has been for years. When you hit sun.com on port 80 you get one bank of servers and on port 21 you get another.

    In short, prefixes are only needed if you have an idiot admin.

    Printing and typing them are a waste of resources.

    Speaking them is a waste of time.

  • Freexe

    It’s a shame that so many sites still don’t support not using www. like my bank (halifax http://halifax-online.co.uk/)

  • Freexe

    It’s a shame that so many sites still don’t support not using www. like my bank (halifax http://halifax-online.co.uk/)

  • http://www.andreas-puls.de/ Andreas

    WTF ? Just use a good webserver like apache and not an M$ wich can’t rewrite. Apache can rewrite the url’s. Hit the domain without www and rewite all to www or the other way if u like it more (www.domain rewrite to domain…) So u can reach the webiste with or without http://www….. I like the www and rewrite my urls to http://www.my-domain

  • http://www.andreas-puls.de Andreas

    WTF ? Just use a good webserver like apache and not an M$ wich can’t rewrite. Apache can rewrite the url’s. Hit the domain without www and rewite all to www or the other way if u like it more (www.domain rewrite to domain…) So u can reach the webiste with or without http://www….. I like the www and rewrite my urls to http://www.my-domain

  • http://www.pr0gr4mm3r.com/ Andrew Wells

    What happens when different services are on different servers? Not all sites are small enough to host the www, db, and mail. If you have one server do a different service, you need separate domains (or prefixes).

  • http://www.pr0gr4mm3r.com/ Andrew Wells

    What happens when different services are on different servers? Not all sites are small enough to host the www, db, and mail. If you have one server do a different service, you need separate domains (or prefixes).

  • http://www.mayhemandchaos.com/blog Sal B

    Man, I remember sitting and watching TV about 5-7 years ago and the lady on MTV who was promoting some website said: “H tee tee pee, dubya, dubya, dubya dot _____ dot com”. i agree with you though. Put this one up there with getting rid of comic sans!

  • http://www.mayhemandchaos.com/blog Sal B

    Man, I remember sitting and watching TV about 5-7 years ago and the lady on MTV who was promoting some website said: “H tee tee pee, dubya, dubya, dubya dot _____ dot com”. i agree with you though. Put this one up there with getting rid of comic sans!

  • http://dmiessler.com/ Daniel Miessler

    That’s what the hostnames are for. Again, as I say in the article, this isn’t about getting rid of hostnames. It’s about defaulting to the web content for the root of the domain.

  • http://dmiessler.com Daniel Miessler

    That’s what the hostnames are for. Again, as I say in the article, this isn’t about getting rid of hostnames. It’s about defaulting to the web content for the root of the domain.

  • http://www.yuraku.com.sg/energie_rinnovabili/index.php Solar Boy

    Ask those bunch of guys at Microsoft to do the same thing Apache can. I’m sorry, thats impossible….

  • http://www.yuraku.com.sg/energie_rinnovabili/index.php Solar Boy

    Ask those bunch of guys at Microsoft to do the same thing Apache can. I’m sorry, thats impossible….

  • http://www.linkbackasshole.com baadbitty

    in sweden they say V V V

  • http://www.linkbackasshole.com/ baadbitty

    in sweden they say V V V

  • DGM

    What about sites where the web server is offsite from the email server and other services?

    From a DNS management standpoint, it’s easier to keep the www as an alias, because migrating services is much, much easier.

  • DGM

    What about sites where the web server is offsite from the email server and other services?

    From a DNS management standpoint, it’s easier to keep the www as an alias, because migrating services is much, much easier.


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