Editing World Wide Web (section)

=== WWW prefix ===
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Many hostnames used for the World Wide Web begin with ''www'' because of the long-standing practice of naming [[Internet]] hosts according to the services they provide. The [[hostname]] of a [[web server]] is often ''www'', in the same way that it may be ''ftp'' for an [[FTP server]], and ''news'' or ''nntp'' for a [[Usenet]] [[news server]]. These hostnames appear as Domain Name System (DNS) or [[subdomain]] names, as in ''www.example.com''. The use of ''www'' is not required by any technical or policy standard and many websites do not use it; the first web server was ''nxoc01.cern.ch''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html |title=Frequently asked questions by the Press |first=Tim |last=Berners-Lee |publisher=W3C |access-date=27 July 2009 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090802051415/http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html |archive-date=2 August 2009}}</ref> According to Paolo Palazzi, who worked at CERN along with Tim Berners-Lee, the popular use of ''www'' as subdomain was accidental; the World Wide Web project page was intended to be published at www.cern.ch while info.cern.ch was intended to be the CERN home page; however the DNS records were never switched, and the practice of prepending ''www'' to an institution's website domain name was subsequently copied.<ref>{{cite web |last=Palazzi |first=P |date=2011 |url=http://soft-shake.ch/2011/en/conference/sessions.html?key=earlydays |title=The Early Days of the WWW at CERN |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120723105704/http://soft-shake.ch/2011/en/conference/sessions.html?key=earlydays |archive-date=23 July 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=August 2022}} Many established websites still use the prefix, or they employ other subdomain names such as ''www2'', ''secure'' or ''en'' for special purposes. Many such web servers are set up so that both the main domain name (e.g., example.com) and the ''www'' subdomain (e.g., www.example.com) refer to the same site; others require one form or the other, or they may map to different web sites. The use of a subdomain name is useful for [[load balancing (computing)|load balancing]] incoming web traffic by creating a [[CNAME record]] that points to a cluster of web servers. Since, currently{{As of?|date=September 2023}}, only a subdomain can be used in a CNAME, the same result cannot be achieved by using the bare domain root.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://medium.freecodecamp.org/why-cant-a-domain-s-root-be-a-cname-8cbab38e5f5c |title=Why a domain's root can't be a CNAME – and other tidbits about the DNS |first=Dominic |last=Fraser |date=13 May 2018 |work=FreeCodeCamp |access-date=12 March 2019 |archive-date=21 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240421053219/https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-cant-a-domain-s-root-be-a-cname-8cbab38e5f5c |url-status=live }}</ref>{{Dubious |reason=While CNAMEs are more flexible than the bare domain requiring an A Record, load balancing is certainly possible even for sites that skip www and use the bare domain — see, for example, Twitter.|date=July 2019}}

When a user submits an incomplete domain name to a web browser in its address bar input field, some web browsers automatically try adding the prefix "www" to the beginning of it and possibly ".com", ".org" and ".net" at the end, depending on what might be missing. For example, entering "{{not a typo|microsoft}}" may be transformed to ''<nowiki>http://www.microsoft.com/</nowiki>'' and "openoffice" to ''<nowiki>http://www.openoffice.org</nowiki>''. This feature started appearing in early versions of [[Firefox]], when it still had the working title 'Firebird' in early 2003, from an earlier practice in browsers such as [[Lynx (web browser)|Lynx]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10980 |title=automatically adding www.___.com |publisher=mozillaZine |date=16 May 2003 |access-date=27 May 2009 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090627225046/http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10980 |archive-date=27 June 2009}}</ref> {{unreliable source?|date=November 2016}} It is reported that Microsoft was granted a US patent for the same idea in 2008, but only for mobile devices.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://techdirt.com/articles/20080626/0203581527.shtml |title=Microsoft Patents Adding 'www.' And '.com' To Text |publisher=Techdirt |last=Masnick |first=Mike |date=7 July 2008 |access-date=27 May 2009 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090627212151/http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080626/0203581527.shtml |archive-date=27 June 2009}}</ref>