Quick Web "Redirect" Question

[SteveO]

Working on an association directory. Would like to just list individual members' sites as simply theirsite.com (for lack of a better term) vs. www.theirsite.com or with an http:// in front of theirsite.com (had to type it that way or it made an autolink, sorry) -- but someone is telling me that if we just list them as theirsite.com sans www and h-t-tp:// -- (sorry had to type in h t t p that way, it kept creating an autolink) then their sites may not necessarily pull up in all browsers unless the people have a "permanent 301 redirect."

I'm not sure about this as I just pulled up each site individually as simply theirsite.com (in Safari only) and all the sites came up just fine. I know this used to be an issue, but is it with today's browsers (on PC and Mac both)?

Thanks.

[Seacrest]

Not an issue unless the server doesn't serve http at all on both hostnames or the bare domain name is completely different site.

A lot of .gov or .state.gov (ie ca.gov) might not work, but most .coms should. (for instance dmv.ca.gov used to not work, while only www did).

[kahuna1342]

Why not give the links just a plain name for each company and put all of the http etc in the actual link code? Kinda like the list I just did here. http://www.jfschmidt.com/royalraindrops/retail.html

[TheTominator]

If the member provides you with a web address of www.example.com and you print example.com instead as their web address, then you have an error or typo in your directory. While it may be a good guess that the company happens to serve up the web page using either name, it is not appropriate that you mistype the address provided.

www.example.com
example.com
boogyman.example.com
are all completely independent of each other and could serve up different websites on different computers.

If the zone file in the DNS record happens to point to the same computer for all three addresses, the web server software itself can still serve up completely different sites depending on the name.

If the zone file points to the same computer and the server serves up the same website files, the website files themselves can serve up different websites depending on the name used to access them (I do this on one of my sites as a poor man's version of a virtual server).

And just because the site happens to work using example.com instead of www.example.com now, it doesn't guarantee that it will continue to do so in the future. One of the reasons why a subdomain (e.g. www) is completely independent is to let you spread the load to a different computer.

For example
apple.com
store.apple.com
support.apple.com
developer.apple.com

Are independent of each other both for administrative and performance reasons.