Techies gone astray - nasa.gov doesn't resolve without the www

[ergophobe]

I can't believe it. I typed in nasa.gov in the address bar - blank page.

Amazing - the organization in the world that I think most defined the tech-weenies ethos of the 21st century and their domain does not resolve without the www.

Note - Firefox seems to rewrite this internally (at least it immediately switches to www.nasa.gov and HTTPLiveHeaders does not show a redirect), but in IE, Chrome and Opera it fails.

Kind of blows me away to see this in 2012.

I wonder how many others who really, really, really should know better are still doing this.

[incrediBILL]

IncrediBill - what about the agencies who are set up properly? Same hosting?

CIA, FBI and NPS all tracert elsewhere but the IRS is on the same service which again doesn't prove anything conclusive, just that I'd suspect someone probably had to fix the IRS www. issues due to high volumes of complaints ;)

[Andy Langton]

I did a bit of analysis and tested the top 100 hosts from this search:

site:gov inurl:www [google.co.uk]

Results:

2 - Broken page
31 - Canonicalised
11 - Doesn't exist
32 - Duplicate of www
24 - Incorrect redirect

A pretty poor showing!

[ergophobe]

Andy - pretty amazing

A friend who runs a .gov site told me they previously and suddenly had the problem too and many people knew... it just took a while to fix.

[lexipixel]

It goes to higher ed.

Doesn't resolve: csupomona.edu

Does resolve: www.csupomona.edu

...then again, who's to say that's a bad thing.

If someone wanted to specifically make the public facing web interface for example.com be public.example.com, and wanted to make another sub-domain, private.example.com, and wanted to make sure no traffic came without either "public" or "private" prefixing the URL, they could be smart and fail on either "www" or no sub-domain.

Should we always assume "www" and no sub-domain are the default public web root?... Or do you think its just laziness in saying and typing the "www" ?

...I actually believe many .gov sites intend to not resolve URLs that aren't prefixed with "www", (fearing that if they left "example.gov" open to public browsing, they may not be able to control access to sub-domains of "example.gov").

[ergophobe]

who's to say that's a bad thing.

I am ;-) I understand about hosts and all that, but you're a government service and you know people might reasonably type in with or without the www.

I actually believe many .gov sites intend to not resolve URLs that aren't prefixed with "www"

Not according to my friend who runs a .gov and has had this very problem come and go (he runs the site, but not the servers).

[jeff_mc]

googled the incredibly inane bug of needing to type www.nasa.gov and not just nasa.gov and found you. i'm so motivated (and drunk) that i actually took the time to register here just to say, "ya, c'mon, nasa.. you webmaster noobs... get the non-www link working, damn!"

[jeff_mc]

ps... w/ the url of webmasterworld.com the bar is pretty high for forum software and website design in general. yet, this forum looks very 1998. no flame war or trolling intended... but really, upgrade to latest phpBB... really... it's 2012... you're all uber-geeks... make your site reflect that.

[g1smd]

@jeff Who cares what it looks like? It's the quality of content that's important. And, a forum like this would not want to rely on third party updates and features.

[SevenCubed]

jeff_mc just have a few more beers and in no time at all you'll love this site just as it is.

[jeff_mc]

i know... it's all about content, of course. but once you get phpBB installed, there's no forced push of upgrades, patches, updates, etc. get a stable forum load, and then let it ride for 5 yrs. i'm just saying that as a first time visitor here, the skin seems antiquated and may turn off new visitors who expect a more subtle, natural, modern navigation and UI experience. ymmv.

edit: ps.. bottoms up! fat tire by new belgium... a tasty lil amber ale out of fort collins

[SevenCubed]

a tasty lil amber ale out of fort collins

Doesn't really matter who she is or where she's from as long as you don't have to chew your arm off in the morning and exit down the fire escape

[Leosghost]

ah..yer man wants rounded corners and maybe even avatars..

may turn off new visitors who expect a more subtle, natural, modern navigation and UI experience

The lack of superfluous "eye candy" keeps away those who can be mesmerised by a curved line drawn in the sands of html..( one of the best political remarks I ever heard was in the late 80s whilst in Malta where, I think it was Mr L Sant who described another, opposition member of the parliament at that time, as having the mind of a chicken" ;-)..and what is not "subtle" or "natural" about the default skin here ?

It is understated so as to not get in the way of the debate..it's the words and the content, that are meant to get your attention, not the wallpaper..

Smileys are available in stickies..but only bill knows which ones to use for a given message..:)

[matrix_jan]

Can't believe non-www is still broken.

[g1smd]

Once someone within an organisation that size is aware of the issue, you're looking at about five to seven years for the fix to be implemented.

On the way there, there will be several hundred hours of meetings and numerous feasability and impact reports before a one year process of sign off travelling up the management chain.

After approval, you're looking at another year or so for the directive to travel back down the management chain to the actual person who's going to spend 30 minutes doing the job.

Getting a change like this through an organisation that size could cost several million dollars.