www vs no www

Having no "www" is just fine as it is. Seems to be the trend nowadays (except for .co.za domains it seems)

You can always add a redirect in the .htaccess to divert "www.mysite.com" to "mysite.com" if required. I have done this with all the sites I host for clients. (+/- 15)
 
It is just a DNS entry and both should ALWAYS be supported from my point of view!
 
Thanks guys, so it seems without the www would be fine since my domain is .com
The main reason i'm asking is because when I submitted the sitemap, google gave me an error for every page. Saying something to do with the www prefix that it doesn't exist internally. I can't quote on it right now.
 
RE: SEO

Consistency is key. It's best for SEO if you work from one solid url. That's why if you type in www.mybroadband.co.za it will always redirect to mybroadband.co.za/news/

You should also set your preferred url in your Webmaster Tools with Google so the bots index the right stuff the right way. I agree with everyone that you shouldn't just leave out WWW in your DNS settings just because it's not needed OR (the most annoying of them all, especially in SA) only setup WWW and ignore the wildcard. Because it's annoying as hell typing in "joumasepos.co.za" and getting "Bad Request" or "No domain configured" (or best yet) "CPanel is configured" messages and you leave it up to the visitor to fish out and say "oh let me try www"
 
lol, well it was an example :D Never knew that site existed. Anyway thanks for all the replies.
 
For SEO purposes you should pick one and stick with it.

I firmly believe 'www' is antiquated, and force all www. requests for my domains to go without.

If I'm setting up a website for a non-IT client I would probably go with 'www' just because it's 'what they know' - and usually because that's how they've advertised their domain in the past.

Badly setup websites where I cannot access them without a 'www' is a pet peeve of mine.

If you're interested: no-www.org
 
Mikroz said:
I firmly believe 'www' is antiquated, and force all www. requests for my domains to go without.
Click to expand...

Popular sites like Amazon, Google and Facebook indicate otherwise.

As mentioned already: use one and stick to it and ensure you have the required redirects in place so Google doesn't think you're duplicating content for deceptive purposes.
 
As stated, I use no www on MY 'sites and www on clients' 'sites where they have previously advertised it as such.

Popular 'sites like Amazon, Google and Facebook are catering to the general populous who are, in general, uneducated on such things and believe www is needed for a website.
 
Mikroz said:
As stated, I use no www on MY 'sites and www on clients' 'sites where they have previously advertised it as such..
Click to expand...
I was referring to your quote "I firmly believe 'www' is antiquated", what you do with your sites is none of my concern

Mikroz said:
Popular 'sites like Amazon, Google and Facebook are catering to the general populous who are, in general, uneducated on such things and believe www is needed for a website.
Click to expand...

If they believed that www was not needed they would simply redirect to the non-www and users will soon catch on, "uneducated" or not.

This debate is like the PS3 vs XBox 360 debate: everybody will always have their own views. Mine are simply grounded on what large companies (who spend millions on things like visitor trends and various other usability studies) do and not minority groups who feel www is deprecated. If you want to/don't want to use www I don't see the issue, the only thing people may want to complain about is when there aren't redirects to their www/non-www equivalent.
 
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