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Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Forget flame wars. They’re so USENET. The new way of geek fighting is much more subtle.

Subtlety of a blow torch

Recently Scott Hanselman wrote a post on the SEO implications of URL standardization which Jeff Atwood followed up with his post on URL Rewriting to prevent Duplicate URLs.

Jeff makes it known that he prefers that his blog be referenced with the “www.” in the front. I think that’s an unnecessary three characters that is quite dated. Yes, we know your blog is on the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web is no longer a nice new shiny bauble. You can feel free to drop the www.

Besides, your domain name will sort better without it.

And for those who say: But if you hit CTRL+ENTER in the address bar, it’ll surround what you type with “www.” and “.com” I saw bah! If I want to go to Jeff’s blog, I can type c-o-d and hit tab and I’m there. A modern browser is pretty handy for that with that newfangled auto complete.

Anyways, in this recent post on the reading habits of programmers, I linked to a post of Jeff’s without the “www.”, which did not go unnoticed by Jeff nor LazyCoder Scott (thanks for pointing out the jab Scott, it might’ve gone under his radar damnit! A nice subversive jab at the man.)

Responding with a geek equivalent of “Oh no you di’int”, Jeff’s very next post, he returns the favor. Touché my friend! Touché. Well I’ve hidden a little something for you in this post. Oh yeah. Bring it on.

Aren’t we just so pathetic?

P.S. Jeff now flinches if you threaten to Digg his blog.

What others have said

Carl Camera Feb 28, 2007 10:21 AM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Phil, I'm in complete agreement with you. Moving beyond www is one of my minor personal crusades. Here's what I tell my clients:

<RANT>

Don't put www on your letterhead, emails, or your business cards. Your website is a "modern" website that doesn't need the www. It does accept it for folks who unknowingly add it, but don't encourage them.

Open up any Newsweek, Better Homes & Gardens, or Car & Driver and look at the ads. Do they advertise their websites as www.ford.com? www.priceline.com? www.nike.com? No. The www is a distraction and weakens your brand. Let's move into the twenty-first century folks and drop the www.

</RANT>

Haacked Feb 28, 2007 10:42 AM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Hear Hear! I should add, leave off the "www", but sure as hell make sure your website resolves if someone inadverdently adds it.

Ryan Smith Feb 28, 2007 11:31 AM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

One of the funniest things I have seen are sites that don't resolve without the www.

Gotta love the CS staff over there at colostate.edu, but I would have thought that nasa.gov engineers would be able to get this one right.

Dave Transom Feb 28, 2007 11:36 AM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Whenever I want to visit a site, I type the address without the www, if it fails I try again with it. It's shorter and easier, and it sorts better.

However, I have noticed that when doing a quick google check on your site ala "site:mydomain.com", you won't have a way of distinguishing your public website, from say your several "beta" sub domains ;)

So the www prefix is good in this situation. I prefer a hybrid approach, advertise domain.com and 301 redirect to www.domain.com.

PS: In New Zealand they like to say "dub dub dub" for www, and it sounds horrible. At least if they advertise/promote without the www, they'll stop falling over their tongues.

Kevin Dente Feb 28, 2007 11:40 AM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

The irony is that for a while, Jeff's site didn't work from "codinghorror.com". I sent him an email a while back letting him know - apparently it's been fixed.

Scott Feb 28, 2007 12:19 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

I thought about buying him a new expansion cart for the VIC-20 that his site is apparently hosted on. But I figured he'd spend too much time writing hi-res graphic routines to continue writing his blog posts if he had the extra 32K.

Jeff Atwood Feb 28, 2007 12:24 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

I say why stop at "www."? Let's drop http:// as well.

And while we're at it, what's the point of ".com"? Why can't we just type "haacked" and get here?

Of course, with intellisense and autocompletion, this is already what happens anyway. So it's a little academic.

Scott Feb 28, 2007 12:39 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Which begs another question, why are we visiting the site at all when the posts are delivered to us via RSS/ATOM?

answer: Comments. The inescapable urge to share our wit and wisdom with the other readers of the site. The need to educate/show up the author with our own comment. The CommentAPI ain't there yet, so we have to resort to going to the site.

Haacked Feb 28, 2007 12:57 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

@Jeff: Your analogy breaks down my friend. If you change ".com" to ".org". You get a different site. If you change "http://" to "ftp://" you get a different protocol.

But if I change "www." to "", I get the same exact thing. Ergo, the "www." is superfluous.

But yes, it's academic.

Simone Feb 28, 2007 1:32 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

I like www more than without...
did hear a radio advertisment about websites?
Do you hear
nike dot com or doub-doub-doub dot nike dot com?

Jeff Atwood Feb 28, 2007 3:44 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

> If you change "http://" to "ftp://" you get a different protocol

Yeah, cause people use their browsers as FTP clients all the time.

99.9999 (imagine me typing 50 more nines here)% of the time, it's http://. So why have it at all?

tod hilton Feb 28, 2007 8:40 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Ha! You a-list-uber-devs just keep going at each other's throats...my popcorn is almost done and I'll kick back to watch the show. ;-)

Scott Feb 28, 2007 9:11 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

That's it Tod....er...tod. Fight the bourgeoisie fascists man. ;)

Mike Schinkel Feb 28, 2007 9:30 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Hi Phil:

Just mentioned your post over at my URLQuiz: To WWW or not to WWW? Given your feelings on the subject, please weight in!

http://blog.welldesignedurls.org/urlquiz/

Mike Schinkel Feb 28, 2007 9:42 PM

# WWW? What about .ASPX?!?

P.S. BTW, when are you going to get rid of that absolutely atrocious '.aspx?!?!?' Compared to the WWW debate, that's far more of a blight on webmanity that 'www.' ever was (I'm personally neutral on the 'www' issue...)

Jeff Atwood Feb 28, 2007 9:44 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

> If you change "http://" to "ftp://" you get a different protocol

And 99.9999% of the time, people use their web browser to.. y'know.. browse the web. Who uses FTP in a web browser?

I say damn the torpedoes, DROP THE HTTP://! It's redundant!

AC [MVP MOSS] Feb 28, 2007 9:48 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

This argument is completely and utterly 100% academic. So what if we all know a site is on the WWW... many people still refer to sites as WWW. And who cares if it's kept around. Do you call it 95? No... you call it I-95 or I-75 even though we all know it's an interstate.

Scott Feb 28, 2007 9:59 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Oh yeah AC. Well what do they call highway one in Hawaii?

Haacked Feb 28, 2007 11:23 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Not here in L.A. Andrew, we call it "The 5" or "The 405".

@Jeff, but we're also considering the possibility of having your URL in print. But I agree, drop the http:// for all I care and let the browser take care of it.

@Mike: I'll drop the .aspx as soon as I have IIS 7 on my host.

Haacked Feb 28, 2007 11:29 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

P.S. Yes, it's purely academic, but that's what makes it so fun to argue about. Nothing is at stake. We could argue about global warning and Iraq, but where's the fun in that? Too much at stake. So we stick to our meaningless arguments.

Brandon K. Mar 01, 2007 11:38 AM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

I am thinking you to behind the Jungle Jim in Second Life at 3pm :-).

Honestly though it doesn't matter to much to me whether I have to press w three times or not. To me I think I would do it without thinking just out of habit.

Justin Mar 08, 2007 4:36 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Thought I'd put a thought in on the subject. I say let's get rid of the "www" altogether. It's always been useless to me.

As far as the http:// ftp:// debate goes, I actually use ftp:// a lot. It's not necessarily redundant, but it's hardly used by the general public (hey, "general public" is redundant).

The Interstate debate starting up: In some areas, the people might just say "The 5" or "The 405," but that's not how we say it in Alabama. It's "I-85" and "I-65."

opello Mar 12, 2007 8:48 AM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Eh, let them call their local loops however they want to. The main interstates should have their full names like Justin wrote though.

So, here's another one that hasn't been mentioned. Like other bikeshed discussions, s/ /_/ or s/ // in URLs (or just HTTP URLs... for simplicity's sake). I find the underscore unsightly myself.

chainsaw Jul 23, 2007 7:57 AM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

The rest of the world still very much uses www so those of you in the development side are probably the only guys who think it's redundant.

I don't know why they ever added it in the first place... I suppose a way of seperating intranets or closed networks from public ones. But, it was fairly obvious that this wouldn't be the case.

I do think they can use this idea to help curb 'dodgy' websites being viewed by kids... but I heard that the court through out that idea. I was a little upset about that.

I'm not keen to have to register two domain names just for the sake of geeks who are too lazy to type www like the rest of the world. Viva www!

Tommy Delan Aug 25, 2007 11:15 PM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

Which begs anappendage question, why are we visiting the location at all for all that the posts are delivered to us via RSS/ATOM?

answer: leading articles. The sure tormentor to share our wit and wisdom with the dissociated readers of the stage setting. The indigence to educate/show up the give birth to with our own report. The CommentAPI ain't there yet, so we have to resort to dying to the marketplace.

canvas oil paintings Aug 27, 2007 1:56 AM

# re: Geek Slap Fight - Get Rid of WWW

This is really confusing because the last time I searched for this travel site I was only told to type the domain followed by the dot com. I wasn’t opt in. But when I added www before the domain and the dot com I was able to find the site. What can you say about this?