Why don't all websites start with www? why do some only start with http://?
362230
Well http:// stands for hyper text transfer protocol its how your browser knows what a website says. Its basically a set of instructions on how to 'talk' to a website. You also see ftp:// file transfer protocol among others. \n\nThe www (world wide web) is a hang back to the original internet where all websites where considered part of the WWW. Even though some sites don't use it say you put in http://yahoo.com the internet DNS (domain name service) still treats it as www.yahoo.com its kind of like a default. \n\nIf you look at yahoo answers its answers.yahoo.com you take off www and replace it with a subname "answers". This allows website designers to split a domain (that's the name a website calls itself) into parts. So say you could have answers.yahoo.com news.yahoo.com my.yahoo.com each are sub sections of yahoo.com. That is to say 'usually' each of those sub sections are at the same IP address.\n\nAn IP address is a number that's assigned to every computer that's on the internet. At the moment its in the form of 123.123.123.123 yahoos address is 68.142.226.54\n\nA DNS takes the yahoo.com bit and changes it into that number so your computer can find who your looking for. So basically the www bit is just saying a particular site is part of the world wide web. \n\nSorry I know my answers kind of complicated but I hope it will inspire you to ask more questions! Try the books Accidental Empires and A Brief History of the Future: the\nOrigins of the Internet. They are really great books not to difficult to understand and really quite funny in places. Check out the story about Bill Gates and the Ice cream coupon!\n\n"www.answers.yahoo.com doesn't work"\nNo it won't answers. news. etc are subdomains that are created by yahoo on their server to split its main server into parts for different jobs. When you tell your browser to goto yahoo.com its default attempt (because you haven't given a subdomain) is www.yahoo.com. Your browser has to have a default to try which is www. So if you don't specify a subdomain like answers your browser has to look some where so it tries subdomain www of domain yahoo.com ie www.yahoo.com. If you gave the browser a subdomain say answers.yahoo.com your browser knows which subdomain you want so goes stright their. So www is a default subdomain when none is specified by you. www.answers.yahoo.com won't work because the subdomain www.answers doesn't exist because yahoo hasn't created it.
527481
www is only a "name" given to the server-computer.\n\nThe server is many computers (or partitions) and each can be given its own name. Which makes sense, since all the Yahoo Answers stuff can be put on (saved on) one computer called "answers". That's why the URL of this website is answers.yahoo.com - for yahoo mail, the URL is mail.yahoo.com (all the mail stuff is on a server called "mail").\n\nIn the beginning, when the web wasn't that big, no-one needed special sections, so they just called the server computer "www" out of pure laziness. that's why it's normal for most websites to be www.something.com - but if they wanted, they could've also called them shoes.something.com or hahaha.something.com\n\nthe www/answers/mail/hahaha part tells the connection to which server-computer it should connect, that's all.\n\nIt's not safer or more secure lol. It's just the name of the server.
338013
You cna either make it a subdomain..\n\nSo if my domain: mydomain.com\n\nWe can make it: m0.mydomain.com\n\nAnother possibility is to have separate uri.\nlike mydomain.com/~m0/\n\nWe can add a user there. and each user can have his own webpage.\n\nBut if you want multiple webpages in one page . You can look at frames.\n\nTake a look at the URL below.\n\nHope it helped
58792
It's up to the webmaster. The domain name (like yahoo.com or netscape.net) is the 'root' of the website; any URL with something that appears before the domain name is subsidiary to the domain name. Since domain names can be used for a variety of purposes (such as mail, file transfer, etc.) www. is generally used to denote a >>web page<< that is part of the domain... but it's not a requirement, as any browser can easily determine whether what it's reading is a web page or not, no matter what it's named.
752905
all that it means is that for technical reasons a web site has been divided. Perhaps parts of the web site are using two different technologies or are on two separate servers. Not only does the number have no significance, it could be anything b4 the domain name . This is called a host name. Multiple host names can be under the same domain name (like answers.yahoo.com or groups.yahoo.com are both under yahoo.com)
95498
If you cannot open the site, it could mean a couple things.  Either: a) the site is down; b) your internet connectivity is down; or c) your DNS servers are down and are not resolving to the correct IP address.  Instead, you may have to use the numeric address to connect.\n\nHowever, that may not necessarily work, since some Web site will examine the URL that is passed to determine whether or not they route the request to a specific Web server.
786642
The World Wide Web ("WWW" or simply the "Web") is a global, read-write information space. Text documents, images, multimedia and many other items of information, referred to as resources, are identified by short, unique, global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) so that each can be found, accessed and cross referenced in the simplest possible way. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet itself, but the Web is actually something that is available via the Internet, just like e-mail and many other Internet services.\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_wide_web
1163730
Addresses have two formats on Yahoo! Answers.\n\n1)  www.yahoo.com (no link)\n\n2)  http://www.yahoo.com (a link)\n\nSimply, if you have included the "http://" prefix, the website will be linked to. If you do not, it will appear as plain text. That way, you can decide whether you want to link or not.\n\nHope this helps!\n\nP.S. Technically, you are supposed to use "http://" even when typing an address into the address bar. But nowadays, our browsers do it for us, so people fell out of the habit.
877768
I wonder if people type in the html code directly into the answers - I will test this theory now. \n\nlink typed in www.yahoo.com \nlink typed with http http://www.yahoo.com \nlink copy and pasted in http://au.yahoo.com/ www.yahoo.com\nlink written in HTML <a href='http://www.yahoo.com'>Link to Yahoo</a>\n\nwhen I previewed this, only the website addresses with HTTP:// are highlighted - I guess this is the difference.
1038617
It depends on how the server administrators have configured the service I'm afraid :)\n\nYou could use the following tip to make life a bit easier:\n\nWith the Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers, pressing the Control and Enter keys simultaneously will prefix 'www' and suffix '.com' to whatever has been typed into the address box.\n\nHope this helps.
247022
all that it means is that for technical reasons a web site has been divided. Perhaps parts of the web site are using two different technologies or are on two separate servers. Not only does the number have no significance, it could be anything b4 the domain name. This is called a host name. (host names can be under the same domain name) As an example, when I make Web sites, it usually starts dev.domain.com (dev for development) - sometimes I separate an on-line store which is in a shopping cart program from the rest of the site by using store.domain.com.
57207
For several reason.\n\nThe link for the page you are looking for has changed.\nThe web pages no longer exists.\nThe web pages are down for maintenance or modifications.\nThe server is down.
1163523
A "web" site just means that there is a Hypertext Transfer\nProtocol server running which will communicate with you\n(usually your browser) via HTTP.\n\nAn "ftp" site is a similar concept except that it communicates\nusing the File Transfer Protocol,\n\nThe two protocols can both be used to transfer files, although\nwe usually think of an HTTP server downloading pictures and\ntext (web pags) to a browser, versus an FTP server providing\nboth downloads and uploads via some special FTP client.\n\nOne difference is that FTP provides the concept of a "user",\nso it supports accounts and passwords (whereas HTTP web sites\nare *usually* open to anyone).   Also, it is just as convenient\nto upload a file with FTP as it is to download it.\n\nBy convention, many FTP servers provide "anonymous" access,\nwhich allows you to log in with account "ftp" (or "anonymous")\nand use any string as the password.  For *those* sites, you\ncan actually use your *browser* to communicate via FTP rather\nthan via HTTP.  Note that in a URL, the protocol is specified\nas the leading string before the colon.  So rather than\nspecifying "http://answers.yahoo.com" (with a leading "http"),\nyou can specify an anonymous ftp site, specifying the "ftp"\nprotocol, for example:\n\nftp://ftp.sunfreeware.com
429895
Maybe you're not including the http://www. when you type in the link.
161579
URL is an acronym for "Uniform Resource Locator," this is the address of a resource on the Internet. World Wide Web URLs begin with http://  .\n\nThe rest of your question is incomplete!\nWhat website are you going to?\nwhat url are you trying to visit?\netc.
79424
Although the English word worldwide is normally written as one word (without a space or hyphen), the proper name World Wide Web and abbreviation WWW are now well-established even in formal English. The earliest references to the Web called it the WorldWideWeb (an example of computer programmers' fondness for intercaps) or the World-Wide Web (with a hyphen, this version of the name is the closest to normal English usage).\n\nIronically, the abbreviation "WWW" is impractical as it contains more syllables than the full term "World Wide Web", and thus takes longer to say. It is, however, easier to type.\n\nSimply cuz' its an acronym of World Wide Web !
1038270
A very good site. Looks cool. If you want to get a full domain name, and keep your old site, check out www.dot.tk, they will give you a full domain name, with a Javascrit redirect link. Check it out!