[thelist] www prefix is it necessary?

[jsWalter]

> if you come across a site that responds to "www.company.com" and
> not "company.com" it's because they haven't done the DNS/web
> server tweaking to complete it. And in this post-bubble-burst
> Internet era, it should be part of due diligence, and any webmaster
> worth his/her salt will have it set up without thinking too much
> about it.

Absolutly!

It's all a matter of DNS configuration.

I've always hated the 'www' prefix (sub-domain).

For years I've used the 'web' prefix (sub-domain) for my web address.

These are the addresses that work for my site...
  - www.torres.ws
  - web.torres.ws (the one I give out)
  -     torres.ws

And as for 'http://'...

  http = [H]yper [T]ext [T]ransfer [P]rotocal
   :// = simple puncuation abuse!  ;)

The guy who "invented" the web wanted to have some sort of protocal
delimiter. In the old days, we had...
  - ftp://torres.ws      - FTP server
  - gopher://torres.ws   - Gopher Server
  - telnet://torres.ws   - Telnet Server
  - http://torres.ws     - Web Server

It was a method to tell the (primative) browser what was intended to be done.

Over time, subdomains were added to help us humans understand these
addresses...
  - ftp://ftp.torres.ws         - FTP server
  - gopher://gopher.torres.ws   - Gopher Server
  - telnet://telnet.torres.ws   - Telnet Server
  - http://www.torres.ws        - Web Server

'goher' and 'telnet' have gone the way of the doe-doe.

For years, FTP was accessed via seperate applications, even though FTP was
always available via the borwsers, just not "advertised".

IE has made the web a bit more "friendly". It made the need to http://
unneccessary, it adds that protocal prefix for you, as do all the modern
browsers.

Also, as a note, to illustrate this point... go here...
   http://home.torres.ws    this is my home WEB server
    ftp://home.torres.ws    this is my home FTP server

Both servers are on the same server.

The IP for 'home.torres.ws' is dynamic, so it changes everyday. But the
browser is asking for information from that IP based upon the protocal
that is sent to that IP. That's why you will get different responces
depending upon the prefix given.

So, my point, the address is not how browsers "know" what to do, it is the
protocal prefix that determines what the browser will do.

OK, more info then you wanted to know.

Walter