www redirect

After reading the article about accessibility standards at A List Apart: article, I remember something that always bothers me about my alma mater’s website. Texas Tech University Why must I type www.ttu.edu in my web browser address bar? Why doesn’t ttu.edu redirect like a majority of all other websites? Is there something that I don’t know about this server setup convention?

It also makes navigating to sub domains a bit confusing because you still have to use the www. Let’s examine the Texas Tech School of Art website. The address is www.art.ttu.edu instead of http://art.ttu.edu. As long as I can recall I don’t remember websites ever being setup like this. And to be honest I’m not sure if I can even think of a good reason why it should be done this way.

First of all, it’s totally against the industry norm. If all else fails and people want to keep the www, then make the website work in both cases where www is and isn’t show. To be honest someone running the DNS on the servers either doesn’t care what they are doing or doesn’t know. This actually bothered me so much that I emailed the CIO of TTU. My email reads as follows:

For lack of knowledge of which department to sent this to…

Is it possible to correctly to set up a redirect so if people type in ttt.edu without the www the website will pull up? I know it’s a little thing and isn’t much to set up. Honestly it should always be done and it’s a basic standard that all websites should follow. I’m not trying to critical or lazy, but it’s just a suggestion as a small thing that a lot of people would potentially notice.

Thanks,

::
R. Blake Ramick

I’m very much doubting I’ll get a response, but if I do I’ll keep everyone posted. If you find this as backwards as I do please voice you opinion to the CIO of TTU. Allthough I’m not going to post the email address the extension is @ttu.edu and I’m willing to bet you can guess the three letter beginning.