I've noticed that I can access my .org site with or without the www preceding it - http://www.mydomain.org and http://mydomain.org. Other sites I've seen don't always have that feature. Does this have to do with who I registered the domain with (Namecheap) or my host (JaguarPC)? Is there a name for it?

It has to do with your host ;)

Yeah its the "host Magic" :D

Is it very common? I'm wondering if I should make sure to set up all my links as www.mydomain.org instead of mydomain.org, in order to avoid dead links on people's bookmarks and on the search engines should I ever change hosts. What do you think?

If your server does it without WWW. then you can make the links that way, coz it will load coz its your server doing it

Right, but what if I change hosts? Can I expect any decent host to host my domain with and without the www?

Yes, 'normally' your site is available with, or without the www bit.


Lats...

If these are internal links, you should make them relative, not absolute.

If these are external links, I always make them complete http://www.domainname.com/page.html

That way you never have to worry.

Now, as to www vs no www, I would always make sure my accounts resolve either way, as there are many of us who are lazy and type as few keystrokes as possible...I never type the www unless I fail to reach the site.

Originally posted by squeebo
Right, but what if I change hosts? Can I expect any decent host to host my domain with and without the www?

;) Not that you would want to change hosts.

Originally posted by squeebo
I've noticed that I can access my .org site with or without the www preceding it - http://www.mydomain.org and http://mydomain.org. Other sites I've seen don't always have that feature. Does this have to do with who I registered the domain with (Namecheap) or my host (JaguarPC)? Is there a name for it?

Depends on whether you're using Namecheap's (Enom's) DNS servers or JaguarPC's DNS servers. If you're using Namecheap's DNS servers, then you can create anynameyouwant.yourdomain.org to point to yourdomain.org. This would include www.yourdomain.org.

It depends on how the host writes there virtualhost tags in apache

most use ServerName www.yourdomain.com

if they simple add

ServerAlias yourdomain.com

then it will work both ways.

If you moved hosts and it didnt work with the www then it would be simple enough for them to fix it for you, really is an easy 2 second job.

Yes, it's the hosting thing. The history goes back to the early days of the Internet.

Well, your (base) domain should simply be yourdomain.com. And in the good old days, we used to have different physical machines (servers) handling different activities such as mail or gopher, and the web (worldwide web, a.k.a. www) is NOT as popular as of today.

Then one of the founding fathers (sorry, I forget the name here) started using the subdomain "www" for the machine that took care of the web pages. (We also began using the term "webmaster" then.)

From then on, most hosting companies simply set up both the base domain as well as the "www" subdomain as a rule of thumb.

However, I do occasionally (but not rarely) come across some hosting companies that only set up either the base domain (without the "www") or the "www" subdomain, ridiculously ignorant though (especially with the later, mostly NT-based hosting servers).

ya, you have to ask with your hosting provider about this www magic

*shouldnt* really have to ask, should be standard practise for most webhosts. :)

It's not simply a matter of the host's server setup (ie. Apache) but also the DNS.
If you don't set an A for both the www.** and ***.com it won't work