May 10, 2008
An Easy Fix for a Problem You May Not Know You Have
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
Make sure that your organization’s website is called up when someone doesn’t bother to enter the “www” in front of it. I won’t bother you with the technical jargon, but suffice to say that “www.xyza.org” and “xyza.org” are two DIFFERENT addresses as far as the World Wide Web is concerned. Owning the xyza.org domain name doesn’t mean that xyza.org (sans www) will go to the right place. You have to set it up right in your DNS (talk to your IT people or web provider). (DNS is basically how web browsers find things.)
It’s easy enough to check, just type your domain name(s) in your browser without the “www.” in front of it and make sure you go to the right place. Yes, I learned this a long time ago the hard way with a “d’oh” moment. (And fyi, there are at least two association-related blogs for which this is currently a problem.)
Thanks for the reminder. I’m annoyed when I skip the www and end up somewhere not planned…but I admit I hadn’t tested my site…wait, whew, mine works!