Submitted 3 hours ago by TheImpressiveX@lemmy.today to [deleted]
www.example.com is a subdomain of example.com. Just like foo.example.com or bar.example.com. Many domains direct their www subdomain to their base domain and vice versa using DNS, but they can resolve to different IP addresses.
www was just a convention for notating that the server was for a website on the “world wide web”. As opposed to mail.example.com being for an email server or ftp.example.com being for a File Transfer Protocol server.
Some websites still have it, for example youtube.com and openstreetmap.org redirect to those URLs with www. in front of them at least for me.
Other comments already correctly explained that the original idea was that the third level domain would indicate what kind of server it is: www.example.com as opposed to irc.example.com, ftp.example.com, smtp.example.com, whatever. That convention existed before the WWW was invented; when it was, it was just yet another kind of service that existed on the Internet.
The WWW has by now developed into pretty much the default service people use the Internet for, so it’s usually no longer necessary to add www., although it’s still technically possible for www.example.com to point elsewhere than example.com, or even for one of them to work and the other not. Whether the version with www. redirects to the one without or the other way round, is something most people don’t even notice…
As for why we don’t say it, the reason is approximately the same: the WWW is now generally understood to be the default service of the Internet (many people don’t even know they are different things), so when you mention a domain name nowadays, it’s assumed by default that you are talking about what’s served on that domain on the web, not something else.
In Japan, many still do and, if you forget, you often don’t get automatically redirected but rather get an error page.
Originally, companies had a much simpler infrastructure and the prefix before a server let you know what sort of server was. So you can imagine something like this:
-mail.microsoft.com -ftp.microsoft.com -irc.microsoft.com -print.microsoft.com
These sorts of services would have been in existence long before the world wide web became commonly used. When it started out, it was logical to put “www” in front of the server name.
Now, DNS is largely used for this purpose. You put “microsoft.com” in your browser and it resolves, and is sent to MSFT. The servers on that end detect what sort of connection it is from the port number used and other methods, then forward your request to the appropriate server automatically. Any variation of it will go to the same place: -https://microsoft.com/ -https://www.microsoft.com/ -http://microsoft.com/ -microsoft.com -etc.
Now, DNS is largely used for this purpose.
Um, that does not really make sense.
-mail.microsoft.com -ftp.microsoft.com -irc.microsoft.com -print.microsoft.com
These are all domain names and DNS servers are used to resolve these to different IPs. Always has done that job and still does it today. But microsoft.com is a single domain name and DNS can only resolve it to a single address (or set of addresses). So cannot be used to tell different services apart.
DNS does not know anything about http or https or any other protocal like that. It just resolves the domain name to an IP/set of IPs. The only thing it can do is point www.microsoft.com and microsoft.com to the same location so that you can use either to get to the webservers.
The person you responded to did say that DNS will get to the correct place, and then other servers will route the traffic using ports and other information. They were a little too strong in that first sentence that now DNS does it, but they did clarify some.
DNS doesn’t do the full thing, but it does do the first step.
Anything in front of the . is a subdomain: “subdomain.domain.com”.
When webpages new, it was convention to use the subdomain for web traffic. Technically you can still set up your site and make www.mydomain.com different from domain.com, but pretty much everyone just makes one their primary site and then redirects the other one. So you set up www.mydomain.com to redirect to mydomain.com and just use that one for your main site, or vice versa.
Because of the implication
Mainly because it’s lost it’s novelity. all browsers automatically search for it so it’s not something people need.
The browsers do no such thing. Domain names and servers are usually configured to redirect traffic as needed, but if you expect traffic on www.yourdomain.example the browsers won’t redirect yourdomain.example to it unless you explicitly tell them to.
ah my bad, it’s at the server end, point still goes from the user end, there’s almost nowhere that they would go in which they have to type in the www.
Old people still do. And they also mention capital letters in their email as if capitalization does anything.
BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world 1 hour ago
Because it used to matter more. As other have said “ftp.domain.extension” was for FTP, mail for mail, and www for websites but that has long been somewhat redundant, as the servers at a domain redirect connections to the right place. mail.domain.extension was originally exclusively for mail servers themselves, but lots of websites long ago made it also valid for landing pages for web interfaces for their mail service if a request comes in via http.
WWW was certainly a very useful concept when people were getting used to the internet. A lot of people had no concept of computers and domains, so to say “www.domain.extension” was clear to people “this is the website for your browser”. And when you say www it’s very clear you’re telling someone it’s a website; that is helpful when say your audience my include elderly people who never got used to computers.
Also the redirection of connections is so simple now, that specifying WWW is generally just not needed. WWW is still the basic landing place for many web sites, but if you don’t include it the servers at the domain will very likely direct you on to the right place, and if they don’t your browser will often try again by appending www anyway and retrying to see if it reaches a valid webpage. So now we just don’t need to tell people “you need to include www”.