www or non-www for your forum?

[User]

Redirects from either www (www.example.com) to non-www (example.com) or the other way around are pretty easy via htaccess or DNS based domain forward.

Personally I prefer non-www addresses except that I also always use the Ctrl+Enter in FireFox which automagically adds www. and .com to whatever I wrote into the URL bar. In addition there seems to be an actual issue when using non-www addresses which is that cookies created by your forum are applied to the entire domain. So if, in the future, you decide to provide some other content under say newcontent.example.com which doesn't require a cookie then the cookie will still be sent regardless and more importantly if your new subdomain does require its own cookie then things can become confusing fast?

So having said that, which do you use for your forum, www or not?
Also noticing that XF doesn't use www.

 

[-GR-]

I think www went out with the 90's. I know some or a lot of people still use it. None of my sites have the prefix.

 

[bogus]

Somewhere around is already a discussion about www or not Maybe you find it through the search.
btw.. i´m still using.. but i´m also very oldschool

 

[x4rl]

Where is a thread on this "somewhere" as ive replyed to it before same topic

anyway's none here www. is so 90s "as GR says"

 

[Peggy]

Nope, no www.

 

[-GR-]

I gotta admit I do use www in my signature for email because mail programs won't parse the link without it. At least outlook doesn't.

 

[Dark Matter]

I don't think it matters that much if you do or don't have the WWW included, main reason for removing or adding it is so you don't have two different web address leading to the same page. One with and without www, more for SEO duplicate content reasons.

 

[Shamil]

I gotta admit I do use www in my signature for email because mail programs won't parse the link without it. At least outlook doesn't.

did you try sticking http:// in front of it?

 

[Shamil]

I don't think it matters that much if you do or don't have the WWW included, main reason for removing or adding it is so you don't have two different web address leading to the same page. One with and without www, more for SEO duplicate content reasons.

I think Google is smart enough for www vs non-www, by now.

 

[-GR-]

did you try sticking http:// in front of it?

Yes it will work with the http:// in front of it but it doesn't look clean for a link in a signature.

 

[rellek]

With www because many people here in Germany think a web-address must begin with www and end with .de. In fact, I even know loads of people with email-addresses like www.johndoe@yahoo.de

Well, therefore: with www.
And of course because with that prefix, web-addresses are usually parsed as a link. and www is a lot easier to spell than http:// (you know, on a German keyboard, the : is shift+. while the slash is either shift+7 or far away from the party at the num-block...)

 

[-GR-]

It used to be a pain with the browsers when they wouldn't go to a website without a prefix. If you didn't have the www prefix you had to type in http://. I think most browsers have overcome that obstacle. At least firefox and chrome I know have.

 

[pk698]

I have a htacess redirect to www in front of my domain. guess I'm stuck in the 90's.

 

[msuccess]

I htaccess redirect to put the www. for consistency in search engines, but when I post the link I'll leave it off. A few years ago I tried to rid a website of ever using www. but it just kept popping back in there in various situations, so I decided it was easier not to fight it.

 

[Netsultants]

I like the look of the WWWs

It looks weird too me w/o......

Especially for design of a site url on a page.

 

[dieketzer]

i hate the www and exorcise it from all my sites.

I htaccess redirect to put the www. for consistency in search engines, but when I post the link I'll leave it off. A few years ago I tried to rid a website of ever using www. but it just kept popping back in there in various situations, so I decided it was easier not to fight it.

the htaccess method isnt ideal.
next time try it from the vhost directly:

<VirtualHost 173.230.135.x:80>
ServerName xx.net
DocumentRoot /home/x/www/xx.net/public_html/
ErrorLog /home/x/www/xx.net/logs/error.log
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 173.230.135.x:80>
ServerName www.xx.net
RedirectMatch permanent ^/(.*) http://xx.net/$1
</VirtualHost>

I don't think it matters that much if you do or don't have the WWW included, main reason for removing or adding it is so you don't have two different web address leading to the same page. One with and without www, more for SEO duplicate content reasons.

google webmaster tools allows one to set a www/no-www preference.

 

[dieketzer]

i just noticed xf looks for 'www' when autolinking

 

[fokerss]

it will automatic become www infront of it

 

[AdamD]

I have a htacess redirect to www in front of my domain. guess I'm stuck in the 90's.

Same, but that's because I use Vbulletin and for some reason people can't login when using the non-www address.

 

[Brandon Sheley]

6 of one, half a dozen of the other
It doesn't make any difference at all as far as the search engines go, you just want to be consistant and go with full on www or non-www and make note of this in Google WMT.

I have www on some sites and non-www on others.