Hello,

I've noticed that most domain names have www. infront of them, but I
realized that I really don't know why the www. part is there at all or
what it is.

Is www. a regular locally created subdomain? or is it something else?
Why do domain names go by: www.domainname.com instead of just
domainname.com? Is there a difference?

No, not really. You could have your site coded to display different
content depending on whether or not it is there. One site demanded that
a notice be put up that people had to go to www.sitename instead which
I thought was stupid, why not redirect if you want it to be there.

Anyway, here is a good blog post by a Google staff member that should
do you good
http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/2005/12...s-of-site.html

mudge wrote:[color=blue]
> Hello,
>
> I've noticed that most domain names have www. infront of them, but I
> realized that I really don't know why the www. part is there at all or
> what it is.
>
> Is www. a regular locally created subdomain? or is it something else?
> Why do domain names go by: www.domainname.com instead of just
> domainname.com? Is there a difference?
>[/color]

www (a host on the domain) is just the common name to get to the
www-server; like ftp is common to get the ftp-server

Most times you will get to the www-server without the 'www.', and then
there is no differnece.

It is just a matter of DNS and webserver configuration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS

its ftp:// contrast to http://
the www indicates graphic content in contrast to eg. email

not sure if its also something of a special address range as many
dyndns provider dont support the www prefix.

samfisch@googlemail.com wrote:[color=blue]
> its ftp:// contrast to http://
> the www indicates graphic content in contrast to eg. email
>
> not sure if its also something of a special address range as many
> dyndns provider dont support the www prefix.
>[/color]

No, ftp:// is the access. ftp.example.com is the server (host).

A particular domain may have many different servers for different uses.
For instance, most large ISP's have pop3.example.com for incoming mail
and smtp.example.com for outgoing email.

Larger systems also often have separate a separate host for ftp access,
such as ftp.example.com. And really big companies can have
ftp1.example.com, ftp2.example.com, and so on.

And you don't need to use a web browser an ftp server. There are many
different ftp clients out there, also.

Back to the original question. www.example.com indicates a web server.
But many small domains also allow just example.com. And some web
browsers will automatically add the www if you type in example.com and
it's not found.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

mudge (mudgen@gmail.com) wrote:
: Hello,

: I've noticed that most domain names have www. infront of them, but I
: realized that I really don't know why the www. part is there at all or
: what it is.

www stands for World Wide Web. The world wide web was originally a
concept in which some computers on a network called the Internet would use
a standard, very simple technique, to share data via pages of formatted
text now called "web" pages.

The name of the web page server was often chosen to reflect what it did.

So for example, a university might have a domain name of "ivyleague.edu".
In that case the domain name is the name of the university's entire
network.

That university would have many computers. Each computer would need a
name, like "billing-system.ivyleague.edu", "admissions.ivyleague.edu", or
"professor-browns-computer.ivyleague.edu", etc etc.

When they set up a computer to be a "web" server they gave it a suitable
name, such as "www.ivyleague.edu".

These days, most people running a web site don't have a whole bunch of
computers to look after. They have just one computer which is the only
computer in their domain. Since there is only one computer, there is no
reason to give a name to the computer other than the domain name itself.


$0.10

In article <1135377529.779407.41540@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups. com>,
"mudge" <mudgen@gmail.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Hello,
>
> I've noticed that most domain names have www. infront of them, but I
> realized that I really don't know why the www. part is there at all or
> what it is.
>
> Is www. a regular locally created subdomain? or is it something else?
> Why do domain names go by: www.domainname.com instead of just
> domainname.com? Is there a difference?[/color]

www.example.com - world wide web server
mail.example.com - mail server
ftp.example.com - file transfer protocol server


--
Sandman[.net]

"Apple beat Wintel to market with 64 bit personal computers"
- Edwin

On 24/12/2005 00:28, samfisch@googlemail.com wrote:

[snip]
[color=blue]
> the www indicates graphic content in contrast to eg. email[/color]

The Web is not a solely a graphic medium. It's not even visual. This is,
of course, a point that many people seem to miss.
[color=blue]
> not sure if its also something of a special address range[/color]

No, it's not.
[color=blue]
> as many dyndns provider dont support the www prefix.[/color]

A limitation of the service, perhaps. It depends whether the service
handles domains or specific host names. For example, DynDNS allows the
assignment of wildcards so that any host name with the given domain will
be directed to the same IP address. It's then up to the server to
provide named virtual hosts (including www).

Mike

--
Michael Winter
Prefix subject with [News] before replying by e-mail.