http:// vs. http://www sites

[brucehohl]

Could anyone tell me the difference between addresses that begin with http://<domain name>.org versus http://www.<domain name>.org?

I set up a subdomain address at ods.org in the form "<subdomain name>.ods.org". In order to access my website I must enter as follows: "http://<subdomain name>.ods.org". Entering "http://www.<subdomain name.ods.org" will not result in a connection to my server even though I can access ods.org either way (that is, with or without the www). Thanks for any replies.

[alcdotcom]

Let me start with an example:

first take http://www.yahoo.com
next is http://mail.yahoo.com

Both of these are fully qualified domain names because they have the server name, the sub domain(s), and the root domain. The server names are "www" and "mail." The sub domain is "yahoo." And the root domain is "com." So, to answer your question, "www" is just the name many people choose for their main (World Wide) web server. It's just easy for some joe shmoe to type www.somecompanyname.com and find your site. So even if the company's server isn't always named "www" many times it will have aliases or redirects that take the user to the server whether they type ods.org, or www.ods.org. Clear as mud? :D

[brucehohl]

I understand. Thanks for the reply. I will use an alias so my site is reachable from both http:// and http://www.

[karthik]

alcdotcom explained it very clearly

the domain name is splitted into various subdomains:

mail == > mail server
ftp == > ftp server
www ==> webserver

so a <domain.org> can be :

mail.domain.org
ftp.domain.org
www.domain.org

so if u just type in domain.org you will not be able to reach the webserver unless u setup an alias in the webserver config file.

In apache u can just say :

ServerName www.domain.org
ServerAlias domain.org

should do the trick