I had an email from Phil a few weeks ago asking a great question. Phil said that when he started surfing the net years ago, he had to enter websites differently than he does today. Why? His thought was that he no longer was told to type in the “www” before the rest of the website’s domain. Even on the news, they used to say check our site at “www.GrayHaired.Tech.” But he noticed that they no longer say the first part with all the w’s.
Phil is correct. The years have seen a couple of changes. You also had to type, http://. Even before the WWW. First, what did “http” stand for? It is “Hypertext Transfer Protocol” which is the protocol that makes the sites work. The forward slashes were sort of like the dial tone that got you in. Of course, now there is also https:// which is “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure.” The secure part designates that it is very much less likely that you are being scammed. The “s” is also required now on all websites that follow proper protocol; however, they will still work without it. Next, the “https” and “//:” no longer have to be typed in to get to a site as it once was. It is understood that you mean it and enters it for you.
Next, WWW stands for the “Wild Wild West.” Not really. I was messing with you to see if you were paying attention. It actually stands for, “World Wide Web“. The term was coined by the “inventor” of the modern Internet, Tim Berners-Lee (ghtech.site/tbl). Not by any politician. The first use of “www” in a Web address was on 08-27-91 by Berners-Lee. An interesting aside is the site he created had a URL of “http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.” Do not worry about the “NXoC01” part and “hypertext”, they dealt with his local server since there was no public internet at that moment. You also cannot get there today.
Since 2012 it has not been necessary, but stayed around for a while after that. So, now you only need to type, GrayHaired.Tech. This is much more convenient. If you choose to do so, you may continue to type the lengthy version into your browser. But why?
Think about radio and TV, for both the http and www, in the beginning days of the internet. They previously had to say, “https://www.GrayHaired.Tech” to get you to a site. Too many syllables. ABC, CBS, DNR, NBC, WSVA, etc. would be much shorter but still a mouthful with the added extra (http://www.abc.com, for instance).
Written media may have been worse. Typing took longer, not to mention the valuable print space for ads that were wasted. This has aided the media significantly.
Think about your smartphone. How easy would it be to type in a site address with the additional 12 characters? Incidentally, Web usage on smartphones steadily increased since that time of invention. As of May, 2022, phones account for over 58% of all web traffic.
It is also a more professional approach today when the https, or www, are missing from the domain name. Today use of either makes it give the impression that you have a personal website or blog, rather than a professional one. Business websites want to be taken seriously on the internet.
Websites should not use http, https, or www for their URL anymore, as they are no longer necessary. Users will go to the same website if they only type the complete domain name like Google.com.
