www or no www, That is the question.

Handyman

When I set up a new domain should I use the www before the address? I have been doing some research on this subject. I have found a couple of sources that say to use the www because it is more accepted.

Does it matter if I submit my domain to search engines and directories with out the www?

Is this going to effect my page rank and where I place?

Google sitemap tool lets you choose a preference between www. or non www which should I use.

LukeakaDanish

It REALLY doesnt matter...

HOWEVER if you get a .tk domain name, your address might not appear to be an address to some users..

concider: something.tk
or: www.something.tk

Of course the second one is an address, however what about the first one?

That having been said, i never present my domain as www.lukedk.frih.net...i choose lukedk.frih.net because its faster and shorter and easier to remember Smile

awesty

usually for subdomains you forget about the www, but for top level domains like www.awestyproductions.com you usually use the www.

manumiglani

Its certainly a concern and can affect your pagerank and search engine rankings. Switch to one, www or non www. I usually prefer www

johanfh

It depends on how your provider has setup stuff. A domainname normally consists of three parts: computername.companyname.areacode. So mypc.microsoft.com points to mypc on microsoft (I don't have one there Wink

) Sysadmins used to name their servers after the service it runs: so ns.company.com was the NS, nameserver, www.company.com was the WorldWideWeb, webserver, mail.company.com, or pop3.company.com or imap.company.com was the mailserver. But it's not forbidden to put a fourth or fifth element before the computername. So some smart company's decided to buy a smart name to 'level it down' by one. You then got: mypc.mycompany.smartcompany.com. Or www.mycompany.smartcompany.com, etc. If mycompany has only one machine or a virtual 'machine' (domain) on another server, it still can use mycompany.smartcompany.com without the www-part. But because a lot of people think of a website as 'www.mystuff.com' many people find it usefull to use www.mycompany.smartcompany.com instead of mycompany.smartcompany.com. It looks better: like you have also anotherpc.mycompany.smartcompany.com, more professional.
So with frihost (a 'smartcompany' Wink

)you can use http://myname.frihost.net or http://www.myname.frihost.net. In fact you can even setup other 'sub-subdomains' like http://mycat.myname.frihost.net. You can setup that in your frihost-directadmin.

And hey, without those smartcompany's, there wouldn't be any free domain-like names, would there be? So, frihost and others: thanks for giving smart names for free!

JohanFH

okullar

People who dont know much about internet thinks that all adresses needs to have "www" and ".com" or another suffix. When you say: "hey my address is: something.someone.one", he cannot understand it and he says: "www.something.someone.one.com"? Laughing

So it will be better to have www and com address, or to add www and com.

sceptileex

if your website ends with .net/.com or something widely known like such, ifind that it is better to do without the www. i mean, 4 letters is just irritating >.> not everyone has a .com domain, so i say make your own decision.

RT Cunningham

Using www is more widely accepted by inexperienced or stubborn Internet users. Most servers are set up so that if you leave the www part out, it still resolves properly.

One of the things that I do to my websites is that if the user types in the domainname.com without the www, the index page redirects to the same page with www. prepended to it. It's fairly simple to do, but requires a small amount of PHP knowledge (if you use PHP) or a meta redirect.

Nitrus

essentially, without the www the command you enter into your address bar "http://address.com" accesses the server rather than the front page of the web site if you know what I mean.

But it doesnt affect security in any way, so it dont matter.

hostingguy

it does'nt matter Smile

www is a cname to the domain. Smile

Handyman

If I wanted to use the www. on my domain how do I set that up. I am using joomla with 404 sef for my urls.

I think that most people still use the www. and I want to see what google will do if I change my address to include the www.

RT Cunningham

Check your DNS configuration. To use www, you just have to make sure an A record exists for it.

zonder

what's the argue! I think it's better to print adress without www

Handyman

I know my DNS allows the www but how do I redirect the non www to the www address. I have been searching for an answer that I understand. Is there a simple way to do this in joomla?

johanfh

Yep, although you don't need to do that in Joomla.
First of all: is your DNS configured in that way that the www.yourdomain points to the same as the yourdomain without www?
If yes, rename your index.php to index2.php. Create a new index.php or .html and let it redirect to www.yourdomain/index2.php. You can do that by putting a meta-tag in that file like <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.yourdomain/index2.php">

That's all!
And if they are in different locations: install Joomla on the www-location and put the index-with-meta on the location without www.

Success!
JohanFH