Why is "www" still used in a URL?

Question

I know how www.example.com can be different from example.com. But is there really a need? Most of the time we end up setting both, www.example.com and example.com to the same IP. Is it still used only to make it more readable!?

Answer 1

I guess it's because people are so used to typing it in. You could do what twitter does and redirect www.example.com -> example.com, eventually it trains people not to put it in.

The only technical reason I can think of is that you cannot have CNAMEs for root domains, thus if you're using a CDN to host your website then you usually have to have it going from www or another subdomain.

Answer 2

• www.example.com is obviously a webserver
• mail.example.com is obviously an SMTP server
• dns.example.com is obviously a DNS server

Sure, www.example.com can be shortened to example.com but speaking only for myself, I like things to be explicitly defined. Less confusion and easier to troubleshoot.