I was recently cleaning up my RSS reader when I came across this article by Scrivs on the benifits of removing the www from your url from a few months ago. The idea that the http://no-www.org/ has been arround for a while (since at least 2003), but I don’t totally agree.

According to no-www.org the reason www. is depreciated is the following:

“By default, all popular Web browsers assume the HTTP protocol. In doing so, the software prepends the ‘http://’ onto the requested URL and automatically connect to the HTTP server on port 80. Why then do many servers require their websites to communicate through the www subdomain?”

From a technical point I can see why they are probably right. The http:// prepend already signals that a webserver is addressed. That the webbrowser assumes it by default, is normal, since you use it 99% of the time to visit websites. So yes, when addressing your domain root with the HTTP protocol, you should get the webserver giving you the default website. But I think your server should automatically redirect you to the www. subdomain silently and not the other way arround like the no-www.org suggests. The silent redirect is for seach engine optimization purposes, since search engines see them (the URL with the www. prepend and the one without) as two different domains.

The reason why in my opinion the www. has importance is for usability reasons. When you hand out a business card, or put your website on a flyer or any other offline medium, you don’t normally add the http:// for two reasons. First it has no point on offline media, since you can click on it and be redirected to the site and as already said, the browsers automatically add it anyway. Secondly because it looks too technical. People who aren’t tech-savy, don’t know what it means, except that is has something to do with computers and the internet. But when they see an address www.yourdomain.com they immediately know it’s a website that they can consult when they want more information on the product/service you’re advertising.

No-www.org also states that you don’t use mail.yourdomain.com when you’re using e-mail (which would technically be possible in most cases). But from a usability point of view, you don’t need it. The reason of course is the @ sign that you see in the address. It is then clear we’re dealing with an e-mail address.

So for usability reasons, add the www. in front of your domain name.