Dropping 'www' from the site URL

A little well over-due house keeping today.

I have grumbled at a few people in the past for dropping the www. on URL because it causes problems, and the various issues have become a problem for me at this time. There are two copies of the site listed on Google (and others), and it all looks a bit spammy, broken links for one are being stripped at different times than the second copy causing more page load errors.

While I have been systematically cleaning up Google, I have decided that the fastest way to remove the duplicates from the search engine is to block direct serving from hpcfactor.com i.e. without 'www.'.

I have written a redirect system which will run for the next little while; but it will not redirect forum threads.

If you use www. then you will not be affected. If you are used to not using it, it's time for a paradigm shift... or at least an edit of your bookmark

mmm i might be missing the point (i see what you mean, though). i always type it without www (and not using bookmarks oh well )

Edited by cmonex 2007-06-21 11:44 AM

For convenience, I wrote a DBMS app tonight and had it ride the PM, Sent PM and Forum Messages tables looking for any hpcfactor's without the www prefix. It has replaced anything it found.

Theoretically that should be enough to (eventually) clear the listings from the search engines that I don't want. There is nothing that I can do about external referrals though - the damage has been done.

As an incentive, if you use www.hpcfactor.com you will get a faster connection through to the server. Everything else is now reduced priority and has the filtering overhead.

As a footnote, I should point out that the same process which is scrubbing the DNS related junk will bounce anyone attempting to connect on the IP address - 205.245.49.105 - to the domain name. Therefore, any threads where I suggested people try and resolve DNS/Connection issues by accessing this site via the IP will now no longer work.

Update: The issue with long forum thread URL's has now been resolved. All content should redirect you to where you want to be.

Here's a guy who thinks "www" is obsolete ...

http://dmiessler.com/blogarchive/its-time-to-drop-the-www

Poor baby (the blogger) such a hard life having to hit the same key thrice + .

"As for people who include it when speaking, there’s no need to be rude when correcting them. Just kindly inform them that it’s faster if they just go to the domain itself, and that the “www” isn’t needed." not necessarily true.

i always write www on domains that use it. For me is cleaner and there's no "pain" on writting three
inoffensive "w"s.

ShadowMaster: good for you , that you can remember which domains use www and which do not. some won't load if i use www, and will without www. that's pretty confusing.

Exactly, which the bloggers recommendation clearly forgets. As far as I am concerned it is a decision that is down to the site owner, but I am also of the opinion that unless there is a practical reason for not having content access on the root domain/www. then it should not be disabled; hence why I came up with the re-route system so as not to upset a whole load of people.


Seeing a 404 error is just sloppy host configuration in my opinion.

While I found his opinion on that annoying, I was more annoyed by his idea that "www" is somehow "utterly dominant" (emphasis his).

O RLY?

What about POP and SMTP traffic?