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I came across a site that doesn't work when I type in the address with the "www." prefix. The following is an example: if you click on this link, it won't take you to any site, but rather display an error message. By simply doing away with the "www." prefix, as in here, the site loads up just fine. I can see why a site wouldn't load when the prefix is missing, but I can't think of any reason for a site not to work with it, rather than without it.

the_midget_17
  • 817

4 Answers4

23

Your question is based on a somewhat false premise. There is no special reason example.com and www.example.com should go to the same site or both be valid other than that this is what people expect. As far as computers are concerned, they are two completely different names that could go to completely different places. People are free to set them up to go to the same place, different places, or make one work and the other not however they please.

There is simply a general agreement that the host name www will be used for the web site for a domain. But there is no technical reason anybody must follow this agreement.

You question is based on the false premise that example.com and www.example.com are somehow the "same site", one with a prefix and one without. In fact, they are two completely different potential site names that both happen to be under the control of whoever owns or manages example.com.

David Schwartz
  • 62,365
11

I found the problem. The administrator of that domain name hasn't set up an address (A or AAAA) record for www.

error@underground ~ $ host itmanagersjournal.com
itmanagersjournal.com has address 216.34.181.202
error@underground ~ $ host www.itmanagersjournal.com
Host www.itmanagersjournal.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

Compare this to what nearly every other site does:

error@underground ~ $ host facebook.com
facebook.com has address 66.220.146.101
facebook.com has IPv6 address 2a03:2880:10:1f02:face:b00c:0:25
error@underground ~ $ host www.facebook.com
www.facebook.com has address 66.220.146.101
www.facebook.com has IPv6 address 2a03:2880:10:1f02:face:b00c:0:25

Unless this is your domain, there's very little you can do to fix it, except perhaps contact the site and advise them of their problem and hope someone there has enough clue to fix it.

Michael Hampton
  • 14,171
0

So I believe you are living in a place where people still put www before they enter the domain in url bar. So you require both example.com and www.example.com pointing at the same website.

Following is the solution:

Add A Records
Name: www
Content: you.rip.add.res {eg. 192.168.111.111}

Should do the trick

P.S. Also works with CloudFlair when proxy is enabled

zedkazi
  • 11
-1

I finally found the solution to making the WWW work.

You gotta locate the Forward URL (or Forwarding URL) feature in your host's settings for your domain. Do a search on the Help database to find it's location, or contact tech support they'll let you know where it is.

All you gotta do is enter "https://www.yourdomain.com" with the www in front of the domain (and use https, not http), and select the option "301 Permanent Redirect". You're done! This will direct all traffic and visitors from www.yourdomain.com to yourdomain.com.

Be sure however to add the Forwarding URL to the correct hosting service provider, for example, if you buy a domain from godaddy.com and you're using GroovePages.com to create your free website, you'll need to go to CloudFlare.com to add the Forwarding URL there by going to Page Rules, because GroovePages uses cloudflare.com as their hosting. When you signup to groovepages they also make you manually sign up to cloudflare.

Ernesto
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