Many people these days want to create their own website just out of an interest or out of professional needs. And for that you must have been curious about how the WordPress world works.
Well, for starters, it is not rocket science, obviously. You just need to do the right kind of work to have the best results. This applies for basically everything nowadays.
You can obviously consult any WordPress website design company and get your needs done. This can be achieved in a very professional and easy way. You can Hire WordPress Developer which design and create tools for your website at WordPress. There are one of the best consulting companies in India to serve this demand.
But then you can always do some reading and work on your own website yourself. This is the harder way, of course but then you can save out on that extra money. It is time consuming but you get to learn a lot.
One of the most asked questions is – which one is better, www or non-www?
Now, see, your website is your baby and it is obvious that you would want to give it your all to have the best for your baby. Sometimes you wonder if you should change your website URL and add that www in front of your site URL or maybe even remove it. Which one would be a better thing to do?
However, professionally speaking, if you have just started out with your business or if it is at a small scale right now, it doesn’t matter which one you choose. Yes, you have heard it right. You can go for a www or a non-www, it is absolutely up to you.
When the internet first came into being, all website URLs started with “www”, which was just another sub-domain. With time, people began typing website names without the www when they searched for a website online. Webmasters took notice of this trend, and a lot of them just got rid of www.
There is indeed, some difference between the two which we are going to discuss further in this blog.
The Difference
When you add “www” in front of a site URL, it acts as a host name which can help with flexibility with DNS, and the ability to restrict cookies when using multiple sub-domains, and there are many more factors.
Whereas non-WWW domains which are also referred to as “naked domains” do not have this technical advantage. Today you own a small website but then tomorrow you would want to have a really big one. You can definitely use the added advantage of a vast exposure of the www sites.
You may not run into any issues today, but as your website would grow, you eventually will be facing some issues. Using “www” today and in the future makes you more prepared to handle the challenges of growing a website far beyond a single server. It can be done without using www in many circumstances, but it’s much easier to be dealt with.
The technical reasons as to why you should use “www”, primarily applies to the largest web sites which receive millions of page views per day, and websites with a large number of services across several sub-domains, and virtually any website hosted in “the cloud” by an application service provider.
Another reason to use www is the site cookies. A common way to optimize your website to have static content in your sub-domain. If you are using www then your site cookies automatically don’t get sent to the static subdomain. If you are using the naked domains then your cookies get sent to all the mentioned sub-domains. This can slow down your access to the static content and automatically mess with the caching.
Again, this type of work can also be done by any WordPress website design company from where you can always hire WordPress experts to have your job done for you.
You can chill for now. If your company is small or if you have just started out, take your time. Let your preference play the game right now.
Should You Change Your Website From Non-WWW to WWW?
No. Do not do it.
Even Google tells you to stick to your preference when designing an URL for your website. Do not change your website’s URL and add or remove the extra www from it. There are no SEO benefits of doing so. Either you can have www incorporated from the beginning or you can not do that as well. Stay consistent with your URL from the beginning.
Also, please do let Google know about your preference and they will consider it.
Consider the following steps for this process.
- Go to Google Webmaster Tools. If your site has been added to their listings, it will show automatically.
- Click on the icon that appears like a “gear”.
- Select site settings.
- Simply choose your preferred domain. If you want a www extension, click on “display URL as followed by your site URL”. if otherwise, click on the required option.
- Select the crawl rate and let Google optimize for your site.
Whereas if you are using the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress then you can add your URL and this will automatically send a response to Google stating about your preference.
Another benefit of a www URL is that it lets you to set specific cookies for your specific www subdomain.
But before you understand that, you really need to know how exactly the world of cookies work. Let’s say that you have a “www.abc.com” domain, and if you set cookies for it, then it will pass down to all the sub-domains. And , if you have subdomains “x.www.abc.com” and “y.www.abc.com”, then the cookies will pass down to those as well.
Adding a “www” prefix allows you to restrict your cookies to your root domain so that there aren’t any additional cookies that are getting passed down to other subdomains. Therefore, for a website with multiple subdomains, it is good to use “www” URLs so that you can restrict cookies for each.
One more benefit of using www is that “www” subdomains are much more flexible when it comes to DNS. So, you can use the Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) in a much easier way.
The only con lies in the fact that “www” sites can turn obsolete because come on, who wants to type that extra 3 letter in front of every site URL.
Non – www are more prominent. They do not turn obsolete. Besides, users find it easier to remember the site URL with no “www” in front of them.
Author’s Bio
Name: Gaurav Saraswat
Designation: SEO Executive
Social Media: Facebook & Linkedin & Twitter
Myself Gaurav Saraswat and I serve as an Seo executive at leading WordPress Development Company Techno Softwares, You can Hire WordPress Developer from Techno Softwares.
