leading www not part of valid user subdomain URL

1. 71

   sunforgedposted 12 years ago

   Going to www.sunforged.hubpages.com leads to (http://www.sunforged.hubpages.com/)
   
   Sorry That User Does Not Exist!
   
   as it will with any username / subdomain PROFILE page
   
   it seems you guys have individual hubs set to resolve for w/wo www. but not profile pages.
   
   Is this intentional? From what I read, average users are still pretty hung up on the whole www. thing and like to stick it in front of everything and even dont believe that sites without it are legit. Dont know if thats true but I was put off for a moment when I was told I didnt exist anymore
   
   
   Has anyone else tried to access an HP profile page and by default attempted with the www sub in place?

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   1. 62

      lakeerieartistsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I don't exist either.  Why not?

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      1. 71

         sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Probably someone skipped an htaccess rule.
         
         Its probably not a huge issue since the majority of our backlinks are still set to old site structure but it is something that could detract from natural links to our profile pages (as they would lead to nowhere)

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      2. 86

         Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Me neither.  Funnily enough, I had the exact opposite problem with a friend's website recently.   Turned out it was a setting at GoDaddy in her case.
         
         Sunforged says most readers still use the www - I thought the opposite was true!  Maybe depends on what kind of user you are?

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         1. 71

            sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            lol, well I have to read about how non savvy users navigate the net. I cant use myself as a case study in this problem.
            
            So.. I dont "say" rather I have read usability studies that find that users still default to the use of www. when writing or even saying a URL .. I do know that most people who speak to me on the phone or in person and want to say a domain name or any url, always seem to say "W" "w" "w" "dot" blah blah dot com , in my experience
            
            
            So, I wouldnt be surprised that in the rare case that some bloke out there wanted to link to my delightful profile page and didnt directly copy the url ..well, they just might type that www. in ... and then I dont get a backlink or the possible traffic
            
            certainly not a world shattering issue - but I doubt its intentional and is easily corrected

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   2. 75

      Debbie Cookposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      yes and the same thing happened to me.

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2. 76

   sofsposted 12 years ago

   I exist I am glad I do

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3. 74

   WriteAngledposted 12 years ago

   For years I got error messages because I'd tried to get to a site I heard referred to just by name and I forgot to include the www. Now I include it all the time when I put in a link manually.
   
   Is this now wrong? If yes, why have they changed the rules again?

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   1. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      They haven't changed the rules, your domain name should work the same with or without the www.  Sunforged is just pointing out that it doesn't work on HubPages right now, and it's probably just an oversight.

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      1. 87

         IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Mine doesn't work either. I just checked and my Google profile is linked to http and not www. What is the difference anyway?

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         1. 71

            sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            There is nothing wrong with not having the www. Your google profile is associated correctly.
            
            www is essentially just a subdomain, sometimes we use www2 or www3 for different parts of a site or like xobba , dont use it at all. But, its usually best practice to make sure that if a user follows convention and types it in that the link will redirect to the correct location.

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4. 81

   GmaGoldieposted 12 years ago

   I agree with SunForge-I am hung up on the www. - the http seems foreign to me.
   
   IF are subdomains don't exists to us-what does it do to Google?
   
   Must we submit our individual site to Google, Bing, etc....

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5. 68

   Rosie2010posted 12 years ago

   Mine works fine.  Like sofs, I'm glad I exist.

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   1. 71

      sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      sure it does...
      
      http://www.rosie2010.hubpages.com/

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      1. 68

         Rosie2010posted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Holy cow!  You're right!  When I googled my subdomain name, I found
         www.rosie2010.hubpages.com, BUT the URL is this
         
         http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&sugexp= … mp;bih=645

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         1. 71

            sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            nope .. thats a search string from google canada I believe

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6. 70

   Cagsilposted 12 years ago

   I was always under the impression that anything with the www. in front of it was on the generalized world wide web and things without it were on private/individual servers, aside from the world wide web.
   
   So, things that don't have a www. in front of naturally, cannot be accessed using the www. in front it.
   
   Then again, my knowledge of the Internet is limited anyways. So, I guess this is an opportunity for me to learn something or not.

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   1. 71

      sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      here is a decent overview of the matter:
      
      http://wblinks.com/notes/do-we-really-n … typing-www

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      1. 70

         Cagsilposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Okay. Thank you Sunforged.

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      2. 87

         IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks SF! That was a very interesting link. It also shows me how little I know about being a webmaster!
         
         So come on, HP, can you fix the link?

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   2. 91

      Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Www is just a host name.  Anything can be a host name, but something that looks like a host name may or may not be.
      
      The real test is if it has an ip address.
      
      If "pcunix.hubpages.com" has an ip address (and it does) , then it is a host.   If not, it's a domain.
      
      Wikipedia gives a good example with  pmtpa.wikimedia.org and rr.pmtpa.wikimedia.org -  the latter has an ip address, the former does not.
      
      See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostname
      
      I don't see how www.pcunix.hubpages.com could ever resolve in DNS because the pcunix part DOES  resolve. 
      
      To look up a host., DNS follows the trail - .com to hubpages to pcunix.  There's nowhere else to go..
      
      However - it DOES resolve - which is confusing and very strange..

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      1. 98

         Glenn Stokposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         It's not strange at all. All the URL's under the same domain follow the DNS to the same server. In our case it's the server for hubpages.com.  Then the server has the responsibility for pointing to the proper subdomain under the domain.  Or if it's www then it just goes to the domain itself.
         
         In order not to cause search engines to list web sites under both www.domain.com and domain.com, which would cause a duplicate content issue, smart webmasters create a 301 redirect from one to the other. HubPages has done this. You can try it yourself... Put www.hubpages.com in your browser. You'll see that it resolves to hubpages.com without the www. If you put hubpages.com in your browser, it works too. Both go to hubpages.com.  So there is only one version of HubPages.com, as it should be.
         
         If you try this with other websites, you may find one that hasn't taken care of this important issue. In that case leaving the www off, or putting it on, can actually go to two different home pages, which is bad news and confusing to search engines. But we don't have that problem on HP. They did it right.
         
         As for subdomains, you are right Pcunix. Hubbers need to use the proper URL that points to their subdomain. There is incorrect to have a subdomain with www in front of it. It's like comparing apples and oranges.

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         1. 91

            Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Yes, Glenn,  I've been using 301's before most people knew what webpages were :-) 
            
            But did you see those wikimedia,org examples?   That's what makes it confusing. 
            
            But anyway, never mind that.  If it resolves, it can be rewritten , so (as Sunforged said) adding the www should be made to work.  And, as dumb as it is, it probably should, because I see that stubborn "But don't I need www?" all the time myself.

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         2. 86

            Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Glenn, I've seen all your answers and I think you're missing the point.
            
            We're not worried about Hubbers typing in the wrong URL.  We're worried about visitors typing in the wrong URL.
            
            You'd be surprised how many people out there believe you must type "www" in front of every website name.  Those people don't know the difference between a domain and a sub-domain (if they even know what "domain" means).  And every time one of those people types in my sub-domain with the "www", I lose a reader and therefore I lose money - and I'm not happy about that!

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            1. 98

               Glenn Stokposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               I am not sure why you are worried about visitors typing in the wrong URL. See Jason's post. He said it very well. Besides, if you are worried about giving a friend  your URL to manually type in, just give them the correct URL. You can't worry about people who don't type what you tell them to type. You're not going to make money from friends anyway. It's the search engine traffic who are the ones who click ads. Or traffic from other inbound links. And they don't manually type the URL either.

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7. 75

   Richieb799posted 12 years ago

   I've had an issue where a client's site was displayed without the 'www' in Google search before now and people do tend to think something is broken if your suggest they visit 'your.com' for example. HP should probably add this on their to do list!
   
   When they fix it so we can visit 'www.yourname.hubpages.com', there is a feature in Webmaster tools which you can tell Google which address to index next time it crawls.

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   1. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I've always wondered, do we need to do that?  And if so, which one should we select to be indexed?

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8. 71

   sunforgedposted 12 years ago

   I wonder what the reply rate on the problem and features section of the forum is these days?

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   1. 71

      sunforgedposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Well, to answer myself ... its at 8 weeks and counting
      
      http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/86908#post1862634

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9. 77

   MyWebsposted 12 years ago

   Of course a simple 301 redirect like they already have in place for all of our old hubs will fix this issue. They must have millions of 301's in place already, whats a few hundred thousand more going to hurt?

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10. 68

    Peter Hogganposted 12 years ago

    8 weeks to one person might only be 2 months to another!

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11. 98

    Glenn Stokposted 12 years ago

    See my post about this in the other forum where I try to clarify all of this...
    
    http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/86908#post1863150

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12. 75

    barryrutherfordposted 12 years ago

    me too I Don't EXIST either

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    1. 61

       Jason Menayanposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Don't worry about it.
       
       It's an odd thing to pretend to get outraged about, even for people who like to (pretend to) get outraged about just about everything about HubPages.
       
       Almost no one is going to go to their browser and type in www.barryrutherford.hubpages.com. Almost all of your traffic is going to come from search engines, directly to your Hubs or your profile page, or from within HubPages. There is no chance of error there.

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