I was recently setting up accounts and stumbled upon something. When purchasing domains, I would typically just enter "widgets" and select com, net, etc. When creating an account with my hosting provider, I would enter the domain name as widgets.com. I noticed that my domains would show up if I entered widgets.com, or www.widgets.com.
However, I recently obtained a new domain name where when I type widgets.com it comes up fine, but www.widgets.com is nowhere to be fine.
Can anyone explain this mystery to me?
Thanks!
Matt
Not all hosts do this the same way. For instance, it is a common default set-up to map exmample.com and www.example.com to the same resource, but it's not required at all. They can be different, or one may not resolve, or one may be a redirect. I prefer to use a 301 (permanent) redirect for one or the other so that there's less chance of splitting the link pop, etc, across multiple URLs for the same resource.
Also, DO configure your server such that both resolve. Best way to do so is set up a redirect from one to the other (which is your choice) via .htaccess on the server. This will drag everyone (including SE bots) to whichever of the 2 you want. I've seen LOTS of cases where one or the other just don't resolve. One case involved a commercial site run by a geek type who set it up that way on purpose. After I pointed this out to him, his response was people shouldn't be entering just widgets.com in their browser, but instead should be entering www.widgets.com. I politely suggested to him (with no success) that having potential customers get a DNS error because they left out the www was all kinds of clueless on a commercial site. ;)
