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Monday, January 08, 2007

To www or not to www

I recently wrote to CIMB Bank to give my feedback on their website. I had just signed up for the internet banking service and was trying it out. When I entered the URL cimbbank.com.my into my browser’s address bar, I had gotten an error message.

I was puzzled. Was the server down? Then I tried again, this time I entered www.cimbbank.com.my (note the www in front). This time, I got through.

Most of the websites I know would allow the mainpage to be displayed even when you do not enter www. ‘www’ is considered a sub-domain. This usually means that it is just another folder on the server. The html files would be normally be placed in this folder. And usually, there would be a ‘re-direction’ to this folder in case there are people who type in the URL without the 'www' in front. Come to think of it, how many actually type ‘www’ when you enter the URL? Do let me know...

Anyway, the idea of subdomain is so that you can section your website. For example, I have the domain adriantai.com. I publish a lot of stuffs on this site. I have a section for my friends called Friends of Seaport. I also have a section for my online photo album. So, to make it easier for my visitors to go directly to the page (and make it easier for them to remember), I create subdomains. If my visitors want to see my photos, they can just type photo.adriantai.com. Everything inside that section or subdomain would be ‘photo’ related. If I decide to have further subsections (or ‘folders’ within the photo ‘folder’) such as one for my honeymoon photos and one for my bachelor night party, I could actually have photo.adriantai.com/honeymoon/ and photo.adriantai.com/bachelornight/ (by the way, these two folders don’t exist, ok?).

As for the section for my friends, I have the subdomain seaport.adriantai.com. Typing just adriantai.com would bring you to the main site – www.adriantai.com.

Take blogspot as another example. To access the main page, you type blogspot.com (which will redirect you to blogger.com). But if you want to view, say, my blog on blogspot, you type adriantai.blogspot.com. The adriantai subdomain means that anything within that subdomain belongs to adriantai. To view Dean’s blogspot, its deanarif.blogspot.com. There is no need to actually type ‘www’ in front.

Anyway, in my feedback to CIMB webmaster, I wrote:
website shows error message when the address cimbbank.com.my is typed into the address bar. it would be fine when www.cimbbank.com.my is typed it (‘www’ is typed in). perhaps a re-direction can be done as sometimes people do not type www in front.

A few days later, I got this reply:

Huh...? What does ‘banking purpose’ have to do with this? I have no problem typing sbb.com.my when I want to access Southern Bank’s website. SBB, in case you didn’t know, is now part of the CIMB group. Does it mean they have different policies in the bank? I have no problem typing publicbank.com.my when I want to access Public Bank’s site as well.

Another fine example of how you can really screw up with subdomains is this:
streamyx.com.my

www.streamyx.com.my

Note: www.streamyx.com.my will redirect you to the tm.net.my site, that's why you see www.tm.net.my instead of www.streamyx.com.my

I believe the first was not supposed to point to bluehyppo website since bluehyppo has got its own URL www.bluehyppo.com. But its ok for TMNet to screw up on this because this would not be their biggest screw up anyway. Plus I’ve never had high regards for TMNet...

Back to CIMB Bank... I’m just puzzled because I honestly do not know what that reply means. Was it a reply from a non-technical person? If so, I can understand... But if its from the technical person, I would definitely get worried worried.

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