domain.com & www.domain.com

Is there any good reason not to have both?

[Ally_Cat]

Description pretty much says it all.

I'm constantly running across sites that don't work both ways. Is there any good reason for this?

[fashezee]

Bad Server Administration would cause a site not to display without the www.

The server should be setup to display the site both ways.

But dats onlee wat i tink!

[claus]

Mostly when i see this, it's the non-www version that does not work. Personally i find it annoying, and use a more explit term than fashezee chose to use about those responsible.

The www-thing is a relic from the old days, where you typically had different activity / servers on different subdomains, eg: ftp.example.com, gopher.example.com, telnet.example.com, mail.example.com, www.example.com etc.

Now, the typical activity is the "www" activity, and hence the need to make it explicit that "we are now on the www" is no longer necessary, that is: the prefix www is no longer necessary, as this is no longer the exception - now it's the rule.

Technically, the www is just a subdomain to the domain, it might as well be called "xxx" or "xyz". To only allow the main content of the domain to be reached by typing in a subdomain of the very same domain amounts to something near insanity to me.

The main content of the domain should of course be found on the domain itself.

/claus