[this may not be an html question]

what should we practise:
http://domain or http://www.domain

99% websites i see, use http://www.domain
what's the difference from http://domain

__________________
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PHP, SEO | anshul shrivastava | mediasworks.org | FB

You should use :
http://www.domain.com

If you specify http://domain, I think browser converts this into http://www.domain.com

Please check the following article:

http://webtips.dan.info/url.html




Om Prakash

Browsers do not convert http://domain to http://www.domain

I think it depends on browser and it's version.

Om Prakash

Whether the 'www' is available as an option depends on the HTTP server not the browser. It doesn't matter which one you use. If you are coding file paths that point to the same website, personally I would strive to always use relative paths that do not include the domain portion of the URL.

Examples of relative paths:

/path/from/www/root/file.html

file_in_same_directory.html

directory_in_same_folder_as_file_referencing_it/file.html

../go_one_directory_up_to_find_this_directory

Why is domain abstraction a good thing? What if the domain is changed? Made into a sub domain? Renamed all together? Domain mirrors added? Relative paths make transitions like these easier.

That's just my opinion.

HTH!

Regards,
Rich

--
[http://www.smilingsouls.net]
[http://pear.php.net/Mail_IMAP] A PHP/C-Client/PEAR solution for webmail

ricard, with ur reply i got another question2ask (that i've asked at many places but found no satisfactory answer; i m not sure, but i merely put this question here now)

how can we use relative links in subdomains
i mean using relative links we can't jump out of a subdomain folder
httpd.conf scheme generally maps subdomains as for e.g., http://subdomain.domain not as http://domain/subdomain

though subdomain folders are in public_html just like other folders
we can't edit remote httpd.conf file; can some .htaccess trick let us achieve relative urls in our subdomains folders ?

and4om prakash,i would say http://domain would not map to http://www.domain unless we do cannonical names setting in a .htaccess file (Apache/Linux)
it is a good practice to let requests served by both http://domain and http://www.domain both but it is still better to convert http://www.domain request to http://domain or vice-versa

as an example i've seen listings of many websites in search-engines; i found http://php.net instead http://www.php.net ! surpise !
though practically all host use http://www.domain
any satisfactory answer for that extra 'www' ?
just a convention ?

Hi Anshul,

AFAIK the prefix "www" is in fact a sub domain itself, but in general is normally used to represent the default web server of a domain.

Additional sub domains are often configured with appropriate prefixes - "ftp" being a classic for ftp servers, but others give a hint of the content of a web (or other) server, e.g. news.bbc.co.uk, you can use what you want, but it's a nice touch if it's meaningful :).

HTH,

Chris

yup! thatz the satisfactory answer
i also hope someone would answer the first portion of my previous reply

Again? :D

Look anshul, it simply doesn't work the way you want. The document root directory, that's as far as the browser is allowed to go. It cannot resolve a relative URL that goes above that.

Relative URLs that cross domain borders, how do you mean that would work anyway? If the browser *could* jump down that other folder how would it know the relative URL all of a sudden should resolve to another domain?

(o<
//\ =^..^=

i've found traces2support my argument in webmasterworld forums; this is can be done by writing certain lines2httpd.conf file (Apache); probably there is some .htaccess trick also4us - i hope i'll -n- we'll find it out.