# Why the www in front of a domain? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 9, 2004, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-www-in-front-of-a-domain/249377 "2004-06-09T00:43:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2004, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-www-in-front-of-a-domain/249377/21 "2004-06-09T22:56:39Z")
Most banks and brokerages have wwws.bankname,etc. on the secure areas of their site. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2004, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-www-in-front-of-a-domain/249377/22 "2004-06-09T23:02:34Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > Most banks and brokerages have wwws.bankname,etc. on the secure areas of their site. My mistake! I just went to my bank’s site and the secure area began with “https.nameofbank.etc”, skipping the whole “www” altogether. ---
**Author:** ![micco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@micco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/micco)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2004, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-www-in-front-of-a-domain/249377/23 "2004-06-10T14:12:04Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > My mistake! I just went to my bank’s site and the secure area began with “https.nameofbank.etc”, skipping the whole “www” altogether. HTTPS is the secure protocol (HTTP with SSL), so any secure link should start with a protocol specification like https:// instead of the plain HTTP protocol spec http://. That means a secure link might be [https://secure1.bankname.com/](https://secure1.bankname.com/). There’s no reason why your bank couldn’t also assign the hostname “https” to the server running the secure site, but that would be a particularly braindead thing for an admin to do because it leads to URLs like [https://https.bankname.com/](https://https.bankname.com/). Any half-conscious usability reviewer should have gonged that. ---
**Author:** ![capnfutile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e0b2c6/32.png) [@capnfutile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capnfutile)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2004, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-www-in-front-of-a-domain/249377/24 "2004-06-10T21:58:36Z")
What’s the reason some domains resolve without the “www” and some don’t? For example, “[scalextric.co.uk](http://scalextric.co.uk)” gives you a “directory listing denied” while “[www.scalextric.co.uk](http://www.scalextric.co.uk)” gives you their page. Why is this? Unless there’s a really good reason for it, it seems stupid as lazier websurfers will just assume the server’s down. capn ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2004, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-www-in-front-of-a-domain/249377/25 "2004-06-10T22:07:19Z")
> [@capnfutile](#): > > What’s the reason some domains resolve without the “www” and some don’t? For example, “[scalextric.co.uk](http://scalextric.co.uk)” gives you a “directory listing denied” while “[www.scalextric.co.uk](http://www.scalextric.co.uk)” gives you their page. Why is this? Unless there’s a really good reason for it, it seems stupid as lazier websurfers will just assume the server’s down. > > capn Basically it’s all in how the owner of the domain wants to set up their name server. Some purists don’t believe it’s appropriate to have the basic domain name ([scalextric.co.uk](http://scalextric.co.uk) ) resolve to the web server. Some companies do other things with this name, such as make it the root server for determining permissions on employee accounts, which would usually keep it from answering web requests. You’re right that it’s generally a good thing to anticipate as much as possible, but adding a www. to the major domain name to look for their website is a fairly easy convention. Why in particular would you expect there to be a domain at [scalextric.co.uk](http://scalextric.co.uk) ?? PS: Going back and reading the post, it seems to me that [scalextric.co.uk](http://scalextric.co.uk) may be a different website that doesn’t have a root page or index, such as a company intraweb or something of the sort. Authorized personnel have a bookmark for [Scalextric Catalogue](http://scalextric.co.uk/starthere.html) or something like that, but they keep [scalextric.co.uk](http://scalextric.co.uk) from resolving to anything to keep the curious out. _shrug._ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-www-in-front-of-a-domain/249377.md?page=1)