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Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨mesamunefire@piefed.social⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://hackaday.com/2025/05/05/what-happened-to-www/

What Happened To WWW.?

source

Comments

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  • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Originally the idea was that you would have a domain and then have a host under that domain for each service (e.g. mail.example.net, ftp.example.net, www.example.net,…). Of course eventually the web was used by a lot more people this directly than any other service so the main domain was also configured to point at the web server and then people added a redirect either in one direction (add www.) or the other (remove www.) on the first request.

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    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The final piece is that often each of those services would be on a different computer entirely, each with a different public IP address. Otherwise the port is sufficient to sperate most services on a common domain.

      There was a good long while where IP addresses were still unutilized enough that there was no reason to even try being conservative.

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      • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Originally there also wasn’t any name-based virtual hosting, especially in SSL/TLS-based services like HTTPS so you needed one IP per name if you wanted to host multiple websites.

        And part of the disappearance of www. now is probably that strange decision by Chrome to hide it.

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    • CidVicious@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Well also at one point www.domain.com may have actually been a single physical server. That hasn’t been true for sites of any size in a long time.

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    • Psythik@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yes that’s what the article said.

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      • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Yeah, but in many, many more words than necessary to be honest.

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  • sundray@lemmus.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s still out there. Watching. Waiting. Uh… Winking?

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    • doug@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Oh thank god that last word was “winking.”

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      • Chronographs@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Wanking

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    • BambiDiego@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Wonmiserating?

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  • vollkorntomate@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Some websites still require you to type www. explicitly.

    For example, my university… Try tu-darmstadt.de and then try www.tu-darmstadt.de

    I find that annoying because I’m lazy 😂

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    • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That’s a 5-minute workaround in the server config. Hate it when idiots skip that. I’m no dev, but I’ve done it many times.

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      • gofsckyourself@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I am a dev, and it makes me think whoever is in charge is extremely incompetent.

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    • EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      www is just a host name, totally arbitrary.

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    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I prefer it, so I just redirect HTTP requests my root domain to the www version. I think it makes a ton of sense, since I www is merely one of the many services I host at my domain.

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    • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      When I was in school it was just when all this was starting and people were starting to get used to the internet. There are a lot of websites they thought were inappropriate for children to look at (mostly they were harmless). Anyway if you didn’t enter www. in front of the web address, it bypassed all of the site block filters.

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    • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      When I was in school it was just when all this was starting and people were starting to get used to the internet. There are a lot of websites they thought were inappropriate for children to look at (mostly they were harmless). Anyway if you didn’t enter www. in front of the web address, it bypassed all of the site block filters.

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  • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    There’s a whole ass Home Movies episode where they keep saying “you don’t have to say www” in reference to how ubiquitous the web had become that you could talk about a website without needing to reference the www prefix.

    That was over 20 years ago.

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    • Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I don’t remember that episode, but that’s a good pull. I imagine coach did not understand.

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      • SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Pretty sure it’s a different episode, but there’s a credits joke of Coach registering “fenton’s naked mom dot com.”

        fentonsnakedmom.com

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    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      and then I sign it “Movie Guy”

      is Movie Guy your pseudonym?

      no it’s just a name I use instead of my real name

      I love Home Movies

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  • cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Its a subdomain you have to make sure you point to your main domain at your domain registar

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  • Toes@ani.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’m still hopeful that gopher makes a comeback.

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    • db2@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Archie and Veronica.

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    • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I’ve never used Gopher, but what do you think of Gemini?

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  • 9point6@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Also tangentially related: one of Tim Berners-Lee’s regrets is the two forward slashes between the protocol scheme and the domain name

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    • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They even don’t support HTTPS on the older articles for that authentic 2009 internet

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    • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Plus domains should’ve gone left to right in terms of root, tld, domain, subdomain, etc., instead of right to left.

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  • beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Any old slashdotters remember tcwww, The Cursed www? Just me?

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  • lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s easy to redirect a domain such as “archive.org” to “www.archive.org” and vice versa. Just a line in your webserver config. Or just serve it directly from the former.

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    • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Ideally you want to do one or the other unless you really like the redirect loop error page in your browser.

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      • wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I’m a rebel. And that’s my security plan.

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      • lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Security by obscurity infinite redirection

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  • cron@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It annoys me how www. is pronounced in english. Really, double-u double-u double-u dot example dot com?

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    • Blisterexe@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      i like how saying “word wide web” is faster than saying “www”

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    • turkalino@lemmy.yachts ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      My favorite part of watching WWE is the way their main commentator says “WWE”. You can tell he savors every syllable of it

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    • troglodyte_mignon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Same thing in French. Doublevédoublevédoublevé. So. long.

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    • ZombieMantis@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      How else would you say it?

      “Wwwwuuuuhh dot Google dot com”?

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      • lurch@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        In other languages, German for instance, its pronounced kinda like “weh” or like the letter V in English. It’s easier to say that way. Back in the day I sometimes said “triple double u” to not have to say it the actual, complicated way 😅

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      • cron@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        “web” would have sounded nice and clear, we also didn’t name FTP the World Wide File Transfer Protocol (WWFTP).

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      • Wiz@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I’ve heard “dub-dub-dub”. But yeah, saying the abbreviation is longer than the words it’s abbreviating! 😀

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      • dgriffith@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        “Wuh-wuh-wuh”, using pronunciation similar to the start of “wow” or “woman”

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  • Decipher0771@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It never got over you

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  • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Just like how back in the earlier days, you didn’t necessarily have to type “http://” before the www.

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    • 4am@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      In the earliest days you absolutely did, it became optional later; especially once gopher:// stopped being a thing

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  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The article seems to not understand the difference between a subdomain and a name.

    No pont in reading.

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  • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    There’s no WWW anymore. There’s content and there are Internet platforms. You should consume content and and hold your breath for what platforms have for you, as part of a crowd many-many times bigger than the one at Mecca. Not G-d forbid host websites and visit them, read what others have to say, see culture and history of something real.

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    • Canadian_Cabinet@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Guys I don’t think they read the article

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      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        They did. They are not obligated by any rule to limit their associations like some dumb apes do

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