In kindergarten me and my sister would stay at this girls house until my mom picked us up and I always stayed upstairs on their computer because they always typed http://www.(insert web page here).com...
Not all websites work without it, here's why:
When you own a domain, like example.com, you can specify many "subdomains". For example, you may have blog.example.com, forum.example.com, games.example.com, and so on. All of these can go to different servers (whether they be websites, game servers, file servers, or something else). It was (and still is) common practice to make www.example.com the main website, but the "www" is a subdomain, just like the "blog", "forum", and "games" in the previous examples. So what happens when you provide NO subdomain and just type example.com? Most sites will make that automatically go to the "www" subdomain (so you don't have to actually type it), but it is by no means required. www.example.com and example.com could actually be set up to go to two DIFFERENT servers if someone really wanted to, but that would be confusing. The guest's university just needs to switch a record in their DNS (Domain Name Server) to fix their site. :P
- FunStats
When you own a domain, like example.com, you can specify many "subdomains". For example, you may have blog.example.com, forum.example.com, games.example.com, and so on. All of these can go to different servers (whether they be websites, game servers, file servers, or something else). It was (and still is) common practice to make www.example.com the main website, but the "www" is a subdomain, just like the "blog", "forum", and "games" in the previous examples. So what happens when you provide NO subdomain and just type example.com? Most sites will make that automatically go to the "www" subdomain (so you don't have to actually type it), but it is by no means required. www.example.com and example.com could actually be set up to go to two DIFFERENT servers if someone really wanted to, but that would be confusing. The guest's university just needs to switch a record in their DNS (Domain Name Server) to fix their site. :P
- FunStats