Andy Howells

# November 19, 2012 at 5:53 am

Hi all,

What do you guys choose for your URL’s, do you force WWW or force non www via HTAccess.

I usually force WWW but, I’m interested to see what everyone else is doing.

bwdgroup

# November 19, 2012 at 6:02 am

Forced WWW using .htaccess

Watson90

# November 19, 2012 at 6:04 am

@andy_unleash

I prefer to not have the www prefix, it looks nicer on stuff like business cards for example;

http://stevenwatson.co.uk

as opposed to;

http://www.stevenwatson.co.uk

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Hugo Giraudel

# November 19, 2012 at 8:03 am

I hid it with .htaccess. When it comes to URL, the less the better.

Paulie_D

# November 19, 2012 at 8:07 am

@watson90 Why on earth would you lose the www on a business card and not lose the http:// too?

Watson90

# November 19, 2012 at 8:59 am

@paulie_d – What would/do you have it laid out like?

Hugo Giraudel

# November 19, 2012 at 9:02 am

In my opinion, either you go for “mywebsite.com” or “www.mywebsite.com”, but specifying the protocol on a communication supports looks like a mistake to me.

chrisburton

# November 19, 2012 at 9:19 am

Non www. I find it humorous when people say “go to www dot mysite dot com”.

Watson90

# November 19, 2012 at 9:36 am

Hmm, fair point, it’s just my personal preference, everyone will have their own opinions I suppose.

TheDoc

# November 19, 2012 at 1:21 pm

I *feel* like it’s personal preference, but I recall reading a few articles that have me leaning towards non-WWW… now only if I could find them…

abradt

# November 19, 2012 at 3:31 pm

(apologies but I have to be facetious and not really helping the OP) You could always tell them to type ‘mywebsite’ > ctrl+enter ;)

dougoftheabaci

# November 19, 2012 at 9:01 pm

In terms of tech, your site should allow both www and no-www and redirect to your preference. Beyond that… Yeah, doesn’t matter. There’s no SEO benefit one way or the other, just in consistency. There’s no technological reason to have it or not, either.

In terms of pure preference, I go no-www as it’s less typing and looks cleaner when typed out.

Besides, when’s the last time you said, “it’s on http://www.amazon.com” over “amazon.com”?

chrisburton

# November 19, 2012 at 10:42 pm

I agree with Josh. I point my www url to my non-www url.

Paulie_D

# November 20, 2012 at 10:19 am

I could be wrong but I hardly think the addition (or lack of) a WWW would affect search rankings but as you say, better not mess with success.

dougoftheabaci

# November 20, 2012 at 5:08 pm

@paulie_d with or without is all the same to Google (they have publicly said as much). What they say is just make sure you’re as consistent as possible and to use the canonical meta attribute to make sure search engines see it as one page, with or without www.