www not needed?

[Guest]

I have noticed something different in IE lately. If I want to go to a web
site, I don't need to type in www before the site and it comes up fine. For
example, if I type in bodyforlife.com it brings me to the web site that would
normally be http://www.bodyforlife.com. It also displays
http://bodyforlife.com in the address bar without the www. Is this a setting
of the auto search? This does this on both my desktop and laptop computer
but a colleague gets an error message when she tries this, we all are using
the same version of IE.
Thanks,
Arica

 

[Guest]

IE has an AutoComplete feature which you can find in Tools > Internet Options

Advanced (of those checkboxes..)

This link might be helpful too >>
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;217148
From my experience it doesn't work all the time:

Real URL Typed URL
AutoComplete works
www.vutbr.cz vutbr.cz OK
www.fit.vutbr.cz fit.vutbr.cz
doesn't work
beta.microsoft.com beta.microsoft.com OK

Yeah, and it does show the URL in adress bar without www...

 

[Daniel Crichton]

I have noticed something different in IE lately. If I want to go to a web
site, I don't need to type in www before the site and it comes up fine.
For
example, if I type in bodyforlife.com it brings me to the web site that
would
normally be http://www.bodyforlife.com. It also displays
http://bodyforlife.com in the address bar without the www. Is this a
setting
of the auto search? This does this on both my desktop and laptop computer
but a colleague gets an error message when she tries this, we all are
using
the same version of IE.
Thanks,
Arica

As well as the reply from ondrejbohaciak, there is another possible reason -
the bodyforlife.com site responds without www too. Every web site I've set
up here at work will respond to the hostname with www., and to the domain
name without it, in the same way. This is pretty easy to do if you know how
to configure the A record for the domain in DNS to point to the web server
IP, and to tell the web server how to handle it (for a server using virtual
hosts you just point the hostname/domain name to the same folder, for a site
that is the only one on the IP address mapped to the hostname and domain you
don't need to do anything at all).

Dan

 

[Rich]

As well as the reply from ondrejbohaciak, there is another possible reason -
the bodyforlife.com site responds without www too. Every web site I've set
up here at work will respond to the hostname with www., and to the domain
name without it, in the same way. This is pretty easy to do if you know how
to configure the A record for the domain in DNS to point to the web server
IP, and to tell the web server how to handle it (for a server using virtual
hosts you just point the hostname/domain name to the same folder, for a site
that is the only one on the IP address mapped to the hostname and domain you
don't need to do anything at all).

Dan

i've run across a few sites that won't load properly without the www.
prefix...but not many.

73,
rich, n9dko

 

[Vanguard]

I have noticed something different in IE lately. If I want to go to a web
site, I don't need to type in www before the site and it comes up fine.
For
example, if I type in bodyforlife.com it brings me to the web site that
would
normally be http://www.bodyforlife.com. It also displays
http://bodyforlife.com in the address bar without the www. Is this a
setting
of the auto search? This does this on both my desktop and laptop computer
but a colleague gets an error message when she tries this, we all are
using
the same version of IE.
Thanks,
Arica

Depends entirely on how the site setup their server. If they default to a
hostname, like "www", then you get redirected to that host (which may be the
same host). They could just as well default to their "onlinestore",
"support", or some other host on their domain. A site *should* default to
"www" if the hostname is missing from the domain.

 

[Guest]

True. In case of bodyforlife.com it's because of DNS alias. Funny thing is
that Arica's friend shouldn't have troubles connecting without using www in
adress...

 

[Guest]

The thing I don't understand is why I can pull up certain web pages and a
colleague who is trying to pull up the page the exact same way using the
exact same version of IE gets an error message saying the web page can't be
found.

 

[Daniel Crichton]

It's possible your colleague clicked "no" to the Autocomplete enable dialog
the first time it popped up, thereby disabling autocomplete for his IE
setup.

Check http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/using/howto/customizing/autocomplete.mspx
for instructions on how to enable/disable this option.

Dan

QuadSquad wrote on Wed, 11 Jan 2006 07:51:04 -0800:

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

....

The thing I don't understand is why I can pull up certain web pages and a
colleague who is trying to pull up the page the exact same way using the
exact same version of IE gets an error message saying the web page can't be
found.

Are you both using the same DNS? Use nslookup to compare results.

Some DNS seem not to retain alias info and hence would have to do
a secondary lookup all the time for them, thus being potential sources
of timeout. Unfortunately I have never been able to find out whether
this timeout is parameterized and if so how to tweak it.

Another possibility would be that one of you has installed an Address bar
search service (aka search hijacker) and are thus seeing one of the few
benefits of such a service. It is the sort of thing that the old RealNames
service used to do for us.


HTH

Robert Aldwinckle
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