A post on whatwg about dropping www subdomain prefix is interesting.
Anne suggested the no www site for perusal.
It certainly saves on the annoying repetitive typing of “www”. But “www” does indicate a web site, whilst smtp.natalian.org indicates a mail relay. However as the web is the interface( the API) one could assume the various applications these subdomains represent are web applications, rendering www a little useless.
This is what I do. With my Debian package maradns. This domain natalian is primarily for my blog. See my httpd.conf . I wonder if a straight up redirect is a Class B or A or whatever according to no-www…
This leads onto a more general thought I was having, about how to setup Wordpress (a web application). Should it be:
- blog.yourdomain.org
- youdomain.org/~youruserid/blog
- yourdomain.org/blog
I don’t know how you would describe a web service or application on the web. How do you know dict.somedomain.org is a dictionary service? Someone has to link to it? Semantic web crap?
I think for now at least, we must strive for a non-crufy explanatory unambiguous URL. I think since Wordpress does not feature multiple installations (at least in my package) right now, so that rules out option 2. Actually it could rule out 1 and 3 too if your machine hosts a bunch of websites via vhosts.
When using auto-complete in most UAs and typing “blog.” in the Location Bar (or is called something else?) and seeing all the blogs you’ve visited I think is sorta nice. Of course loads of people don’t call a blog, a blog. Pain.
I think it is better to name the application solely by the Internet Domain Name of the URL. Let the Path be the property of that web application. See my pictures web application for an example. So as you can see I am leaning towards option 1. But that would mean that everyone needs to use something like vhosts and wildcard authorative DNS server. This might totally break DNS based load balancing and related work.
