WWW

Domain

• A domain is what you type in to tell the machine where to get data from
• a domain is in the format of ‘subdomain.domain.extention’ (i.e. www.google.com)

SubDomain

• A subdomain allows the domain to have multiple places to get data from but only using one domain
• Meaning, I can setup an FTP server with ftp.example.com, a web server with www.example.com and a media server media.example.com

Web and www

• ‘www’ is simply what is called a subdomain
• ‘www’ is the sub-domain of the internet, intented for web services (there are other internet services i.e. internet file server, internet DNS server)

It exists to identify the address as a website

• Web is not the whole of the Internet - there are other services than the Web on the Internet (ftp.hovermind.com, media.hovermind.com, www.hovermind.com)
• so: www.hovermind.com means we are looking for hovermind.com domain in the www sub-domain of the internet

Naked domain

• domain without (internet) sub-domain prefix: hovermind.com -> its a naked domain. it could be ftp.hovermind.com or www.hovermind.com or …
• when you write naked ddomain in browser, browser assumes that you were intended for www (web subdomain of the internet) and adds it behind the scene

Why should use www and not use naked domain**

• naked domain cannot have a CNAME record
• If you use the naked domain, the cookies get sent to all subdomains, slowing down access to static content, and possibly causing caching to not work properly.

Links

• https://www.yes-www.org/
• https://www.yes-www.org/why-use-www/
• https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-HTTP-and-WWW