What’s Wrong With www?

It ain’t cool bud. If you’d like a detailed diatribe on where www came from (Tim Berners–Lee), why it was bought into being and why it is not used by some (notably the folks over at http://no-www.org), then you came to the wrong article.

But, that still leaves lots of white screen for me to type this. I used to think www was magical (’94?, ‘95? (wish I could remember)), then I thought it was passe, 2005?, 2006, and now I think it’s important.

What?

No, not so your Auntie knows what to type in, or so the newsreader can trip over their own fillings trying to say “double yew, double yew, double yew dot…”. But, ironically, perhaps, for the reason it was bought into being, to an extent; for consistency.

Without www, life is simpler, by three letters. With it, it’s more complex, by three letters. So without is the best way to go. Right? Wrong. I have bumped into enough times when the presence of www or the lack of it can lead to inconsistencies, to realise that the main problem to be tackled is not three letters or not three letters but the not knowing which. If my web page analytics are thrown off by some visits being to www and some without then I am grumpy. If my Google Page Rankings are thrown off by some visits to my www page and some to the bare http:// only prefixed page then I am irritable. If my sitemap.xml file is unable to be recognised by Google because it addresses my site as http:// and Google expected it on www (http://www of course, I am being a lazy boy), then I am “Grr’d”.

So why not just embrace the benefit of always going one way. Always drive down the side of the road the same way. Always get on a train that has carriages with wheels spaced correctly for the track. Blagh, blagh. Standards are in themselves often not the pinnacle, for me, it is much simpler to loose the passe and irrelevant www, but, keeping and using it, though a little more typing, will mean I have zero to think of or worry about when I am next uploading a sitemap.xml.