www as a subdomain
We don't tend to think of www as a subdomain, but does it even serve a purpose anymore?
What is www?
The term www itself stands for "world wide web". Prior to the internet becoming the hellscape it is now, there was still an internet. Which itself was used for many other things (telnet, email, FTP,...).
It was traditional to assign domain name aliases to servers for common functions, like smtp.example.com for email and ftp.example.com for FTP. When the web came along in the early 1990s, it was just another application among many.
We're able to conclude it's just a subdomain. A subdomain that also acts as the original domain in our current time.
What's the point of www?
We're about 34 years into the future, so why do we still bother using www? After all, it doesn't seem to be of much use. Even worse, if you're configuring your DNS (Domain Name System) and don't account for www as a possible target, your clients will be met with a message telling them the site couldn't be found.
Browsers themselves have stopped showing www as well.
Could there be some other use for www? Is there an alternative we missed?
Of course there is! Separation of concern.
Subdomains are incredibly useful for keeping cookies separate, facilitating different authentication mechanisms. For example, shop.thoughtsbylorenzo.com for e-commerce and forum.thoughtsbylorenzo.com for discussions can have separate authentication and session management, making for better security.
Alternate use of the web
Turns out, Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the world wide web), has a few things he'd change if given the chance.
I would have skipped on the double slash – there’s no need for it. Also I would have put the domain name in the reverse order – in order of size so, for example, the BCS address would read: http:/uk.org.bcs/members. The last two terms of this example could both be servers if necessary. – Tim Berners-Lee
This would follow quite a similar naming convention that could be seen with Java packages. However www itself does not seem to have any such role here, so perhaps it is time we move on from this old and useless structure.
Do you know of any other uses for the www subdomain?