
Ask HN: Add “www.” to my domain, or not? - _dt47
Old question, but I would like to hear what you have been doing with your projects lately.<p>Any thoughts?
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meesterdude
The main reason to use www is because you can't CNAME a apex domain, but you
can on a subdomain. Sometimes this matters - and other times it doesn't. For
my day job at an internet hosting company, we use www for our clients so we
can CNAME their locations.

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NetStrikeForce
I came here to say exactly this.

One of the main use cases to need a CNAME is if you use a Global Traffic
Manager (DNS-based failover?).

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niftich
Obligatory:

[1] [http://no-www.org/](http://no-www.org/) (scroll all the the way down)

[2] [http://www.yes-www.org/](http://www.yes-www.org/)

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NeutronBoy
If your TLD is recognisable (e.g. .com, .net, .org) then no need - people will
recognise it as a domain.

However, if you've got a new-fangled TLD (.recipies, .shoes, etc) then use
'www' \- without context, people aren't going to recognise [redacted] as a
URL, but they will recognise [redacted] as one.

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walrus01
Your DNS should always have both that go to the same httpd, or is this a
question about advertising, business cards etc?

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UnoriginalGuy
I add it, but redirect away from it. Some users have it engrained to add the
www.* to everything, giving them a DNS error isn't ideal.

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WheelsAtLarge
Yes,it's simple enough to add to the DNS and have both. Many of the everyday
users I've worked with seem to want to add it to all the browser urls they
type in. It doesn't matter if the original has it or not.

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skiltz
Personally I've been ditching the www but either is fine. Pick one and stick
with it, don't mix and match. Always use https.

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drewrv
Also, redirect one to the other.

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lovelearning
If you type any word in Chrome/FF and press Ctrl+Enter, they automatically
prefix "www." and suffix ".com". It's a shortcut a lot of users have got used
to by now. So, at the very least, make sure www doesn't give a 404. I set up
DNS to redirect my main domains to their www.

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exolymph
I use www for the canonical domain and redirect the bare domain to the www
version.

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AndyMcConachie
Why not just use both and have them host the same things?

It's what I do. example.com www.example.com

They both host the same thing and have the same TLS cert.

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james-skemp
Do you redirect to one, or have both as their own thing? I thought for SEO you
wanted to have one or the other, with a redirect in place for the one that you
don't consider your canonical domain?

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MattBearman
I personally use www. simply for the symmetry. To me, www.bugmuncher.com looks
a lot nicer than just bugmuncher.com

