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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: April 28, 2002 Removing the Ws from URLs (WebWord) -- "In this article, however, I will go one step further and recommend that sites should be set up to work with or without the Ws, but also have the Ws automatically removed from the URL using a server-side technique I will henceforth refer to as "removing the Ws". I will detail why I feel this is a more appropriate solution and explain how this can be done." (Comments: This is a guest article by Jeff Lash.)
Reader Comments...
The author seems to be stuck in a web centric world. A domain name is not just a pointer to a web site, and subdomains help segregate traffic and help people understand the difference between www.domain.com and mail.domain.com.
A few people don't recognize a web address without the "www." So I always print it or recommend printing it in all advertising. Perhaps those people think it's an e-mail address. I don't know. But they ask me, so I include the www. Posted by: Jack Schonchin on April 29, 2002 01:01 AM
Jeff Lash wrote: I'm not convinced of this. Has anyone done testing on this, or noticed any confusion when testing other aspects of a site? Also, it's easier to select the browser bar and type www.domain.com, or domain and hit enter. But if it's not a .com address, you'd have to type in http://domain.co.uk, which is harder on the typing! Posted by: alastair campbell on April 29, 2002 07:41 AM
The W article is good info and I appreciate having it. I'd like to see addresses advance even more... 1) Drastically improve how browsers manage bookmarks. (And get Microsoft to start calling them "bookmarks!") 2) Establish a standard whereby all domain names can be translated into a numeric and bar code address (not IP numbers!). 3) Make pen-size "URL scanners" commonplace for grabbing URLs from everyday items. (Not proprietary technology like CueCat.) Sure, keep domain names around, but once you make addresses easy to grab, store and use, few people will bother trying to remember some goofy-name-address.com. Posted by: Jack Schonchin on April 29, 2002 08:55 AM
jon wrote: I am not saying that subdomains should not be used. My point was that most people don't see any difference between www.domain.com and domain.com (because, in nearly all cases, they are exactly the same). Ideally, users should never have to explicitly say what resource they are trying to access. If they type domain.com into a browser, it means "www."; if they type it in a mail program, it means "mail."; if they type it in an ftp program, it means "ftp." Since most people only encounter the www side of a domain (and the mail subdomain is usually transparent), they shouldn't have to understand the difference from the technical side. Jack wrote: If you're in a situation where people will not understand that domain.com is the same thing as www.domain.com, then adding the www is the right thing to do. However, I think is becoming less and less common, and the nice thing about setting the server up the way I described is that it will accept the www prefix. Alastair wrote: I have done a number of tests on sites where the URL changes and have never had anyone make a comment or even notice the change. This includes the change I described in the article (from www.domain.com to domain.com) as well as more drastic domain changes (from onedomain.com to anotherdomainname.com). In my experience, so long as the visual design remains fairly similar, the URL change will not be noticed. Alastair also wrote: But if it's not a .com address, you'd have to type in http://domain.co.uk, which is harder on the typing!" This system allows users to type in the www prefix. So, they could type in www.domain.co.uk and it would get them to the correct site. It is my understanding that nearly all modern browsers (v3 and later) will automatically insert the "http://" for you, so someone would choose between www.domain.co.uk and domain.co.uk, or www.domain.com and domain.com. And, if the person is one of the rare people who knows the key command to have the browser automatically insert the "www." prefix and ".com" suffix (and actually uses it), this system will support them as well. Posted by: Jeff Lash on April 29, 2002 09:42 AM
Ya, in defense, I also know a few people who got excited when they discovered they could reach a web site without typing www. They now try all addresses that way and get annoyed when they have to type the www. Posted by: Jack Schonchin on April 29, 2002 10:01 AM
I've had a number of special case web servers set up, usually using subdomains. Things like asar.ironclad.net.au or iye2002.ironclad.net.au. In telling people these domain names, and telling them it is a website, I'm frequently confounded by the user automatically typing www. in front, making www.asar.ironclad.net.au ... which doesn't work and isn't meant to work. I'm resigned to the fact that users expect to find www. in front of domain names for websites. Yes, they don't notice or care or get confused if the website redirects to the simpler address ... but then if that user ever goes to communicate that domain name to someone else they will invariably add in the www. Seems like an uphill battle with little real benefit .... ... and some serious negatives: my mac recognises "slack" urls and reacts intelligently - if it sees "www.somestring" it will automatically turn it into "http://www.somestring". Similarly, when it sees "ftp.blahblah" it treats it as "ftp://ftp.blahblah", and any string with an "@" character it will consider to be an email address. I've leveraged that same significance in a basic CMS for a non-technical audience. All they need enter is www.domain-name.com and the system turns it into an HTML link. Magic. Many systems rely on the "www" acting as a signifier of the missing "http://". Remove the "www" and you'll force people to start typing "http://" instead. Going backwards now on the typing front. Posted by: Eric Scheid on April 29, 2002 10:46 AM
I agree, I think some users expect (and possibly need) the www. and some software (e.g. MS Word) uses it to recognise URLs, so you may end up having to play safe and include http:// more often. So even though removing www. appeals to me for technical and brevity reasons, I think for usability I'd be inclined to reverse the system and add it when it's missing. The obvious exceptions are sites like this which are promoted as [something].com . Posted by: Matt Round on April 29, 2002 02:58 PM
The pro's and cons of this approach and the existence of (or lack of) sufficient data to dictate what to do, I do know that Apache isn't the only web server out there. A number of my sites run on Micro$oft IIS. Here's the quick and dirty on how I configured IIS 5.0 for a corporate client awhile back to accomplish what Lash described for Apache. (I know, I know - coinz.org doesn't practice what this preaches. Give me a break, I'm trying to help...)
That's it - you're done! (OK, OK - Apache's one line edit was a little easier, but hey - no wizard!) Incoming www.foo.com requests will now be redirected to your foo.com web site ('Foo') by your redirector web site ('Redirect'), along with any parameters passed in the original URL (that's what the IIS gibberish was all about - more about that can be found on Microsoft's Advanced Server site. You can add as many other headers to the redirect site as you'd like - they'll all be redirected in the same way, along with all parameters. Hope this helps a few of you,
From what I have observed, most people don't get confused when they see something like "visit yahoo.com" (using Yahoo as an example), but they seem to prefer seeing "visit http://www.yahoo.com" for scanning purposes - it is easier to recognise the "http://www." in an article than it is to see "yahoo.com" within text. I have become spoiled by the Macintosh IE browser, which allows you to type in just "yahoo" and it will add the "www." and ".com" for you. (obviously, for .net addresses or other variations, I have to type that part in myself.) I go to work and use the PC, where I have to type everything in, and I perceive it as taking me much more time. I have (on a smaller scale than a typical usability testing situation) observed that inexperienced users become irritable when they type www.yahoo.com and the address changes to http://yahoo.com. They miss the www. For consistency (in case I reference other URLs that don't drop the www.), I use the www. all the time in print. Experienced users can always drop it when they type in the address if they want to. Posted by: Sandra on April 29, 2002 03:16 PM
One last technicality - these browser redirects will work with the typical GET HTTP requests, but will *break* any POST requests. You probably won't see that problem much though, unless you have some popular webservice where the form is located elsewhere. Posted by: Eric Scheid on April 29, 2002 09:55 PM
Two words - 'security' and 'certificates'. If you intend to trade from your website, you're probably going to want to buy a security certificate from Verisign or whoever. Or at least, if you don't, you're not going to get many customers. Problem is, a certificate must be bought and used for a precise URL, including the WWW. So, what are you going to do? Buy a certificate for your URL with or without the WWW? Or one for each, meaning you'll have to put up 2 versions of the relevant pages or do some clever re-routing. Of course, this doesn't mean that Verisign is going about things the right way, but it rather works against the 'drop the WWW' idea. Posted by: Alan Fisher on May 1, 2002 04:36 AM
Certainly, if your site is set up to accept "http://www.something.com/" and "http://something.com/" as its home page, you should configure it so one is redirected to the other. It's confusing on multiple levels if you have multiple valid URLs for the same resource. As for whether to include the "www." part, I can argue both ways. Certainly, in a context where the "http://" is omitted, the "www." helps people recognize it as a web address. People recognize it, and unconsciously associate it with web pages. There's already been a campaign to replace "www." with "web.", and you can see how successful that was. As far as forms and certificates go, the key is consistency. Once you pick the One True URL for each page, make sure that every reference to it is correct within your own site. Apache has a lot of stuff to help make sure people get redirected to the correct addresses, like mod_spelling, but you have to turn them on first. Posted by: David Menendez on May 2, 2002 04:42 PM
There seem to be a typo in the original article. Where the autor wrote: ...I think it should really be like this (note the trailing slash): Without this little modification I couldn’t get Apache to redirect correctly the subdir, as I was being redirected to, say, mysite.commydir instead of mysite.com/mydir. Does it work for you this way too?
Posted by: Antonio Cavedoni on May 2, 2002 05:26 PM
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