poll WWW vs non-WWW - Which is better for new gTLDs?

[RU]

Hi,

I need to choose which one should be primary. Some websites on new gTLDs have www and some without www. Seems to me the newer do not use WWW. Is "WWW" redundant?

http://****.sale or http://www.*****.sale

What to choose?

Please vote.

Thank you.

 

[Paul]

I'm curious how load balancing via CNAME would work with DNSSEC because I was under the impression the RFC indicated only one CNAME per owner so multiple CNAME for load balance like some do is an RFC breaking hack, and thus might cause DNSSEC issues. But I might be wrong.

Usually the (single) CNAME will point to some other record that is easier to control automatically. This way, load balancers don't have access to modify all DNS records, just a few.

Sadly neither of our DNS providers support DNSSEC yet, but they both claim to be working on it. Last I heard, Cloudflare ran into some design complications.

 

[Enfant]

Ruslan, specially for you

 

[RU]

Awww, thanks Katerina

 

[mikenormal]

Both lead to the same place

 

[Nick]

Whenever I see an ad with "www.", I immediately give less credit because I assume the business doesn't know that it's redundant to have it. Which, in turn, makes me feel like they're not up to date on technology. I'd almost rather listen to nails on a chalkboard than see someone type out "www." in the address bar, too.

However, I do see the conundrum with some new gTLDs. As a new gTLD holder, I'd love to see some market research done to find out if the average person "gets it".

 

[JyotiG]

I like my sites without www and I agree it's redundant now

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Whenever I see an ad with "www.", I immediately give less credit because I assume the business doesn't know that it's redundant to have it. Which, in turn, makes me feel like they're not up to date on technology. I'd almost rather listen to nails on a chalkboard than see someone type out "www." in the address bar, too.

However, I do see the conundrum with some new gTLDs. As a new gTLD holder, I'd love to see some market research done to find out if the average person "gets it".

The cookie point made earlier however is a good argument for using www.

If you do not use the www but just use example.com then cookies you use the browser will send with every request to every sub-domain.

So if you have advertising banners etc. on the domain banners.example.com that are hotlinked on other web sites - when users visit those other websites and their browser requests the banner, if they have a cookie for example.com the browser will send it.

It then looks like a third party cookie to privacy software even if you aren't using it to track, and the privacy software could block your banner.

So there actually is a technical reason to want to use the www. It keeps the cookies to the www subdomain, and browsers won't send them to requests on banners.example.com.

 

[Nick]

The cookie point made earlier however is a good argument for using www.

If you do not use the www but just use example.com then cookies you use the browser will send with every request to every sub-domain.

So if you have advertising banners etc. on the domain banners.example.com that are hotlinked on other web sites - when users visit those other websites and their browser requests the banner, if they have a cookie for example.com the browser will send it.

It then looks like a third party cookie to privacy software even if you aren't using it to track, and the privacy software could block your banner.

So there actually is a technical reason to want to use the www. It keeps the cookies to the www subdomain, and browsers won't send them to requests on banners.example.com.

Yeah, I can see that use case and am not disputing it. I think the original point about the use of "www" was geared towards advertisements, though. Surely, you can redirect traffic to or away from "www" using HTACCESS, if need be:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

In apache -

<VirtualHost 192.168.0.1:80>
ServerName www.example.com
Redirect permanent / http://example.com/
</VirtualHost>

 

[baldonius]

The tech community seems to be sliding towards non-www.

I tend to mix it up. Sometimes if a site is aimed at the general public or non-tech people I'll use www.

If it's aimed at tech people I make it non-www.

But as I say I like to mix it up a bit. Depends on the how the URL looks in the address bar.

 

[baldonius]

I'm actually not sure. Some websites don't even resolve without the www. (including my girlfriends university).

It has been so prevalent that people perceive www as being a mandatory prefix of some kind, when it's just an arbitrary sub-domain.

E.g. people linking to their Twitter account as 'www.twitter.com/[username]' without the transfer protocol.

 

[RU]

Rightside showing domains with 'www' http://nic.sale

 

[RU]

I decided to go without 'WWW' ..but I think the best solution to promote nTLD domains in the wild with 'WWW'.


Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[S-B]

It has been so prevalent that people perceive www as being a mandatory prefix of some kind, when it's just an arbitrary sub-domain.

E.g. people linking to their Twitter account as 'www.twitter.com/[username]' without the transfer protocol.

Very true.

 

[vdonline]

For me, www is just a sub domain. I prefer non-www for all of my websites.

 

[gpmgroup]

double post

 

[gpmgroup]

Try a few

dell.com
ibm.com

sony.com
nokia.com

apple.com
microsoft.com

facebook.com
tumblr.com
reddit.com

 

[vdonline]

2 of my favourite websites:

9gag.com
clientsfromhell.net

IMO, www is just a habit, it doesn't require for CDN or anything else