Why do some of my pages show in referrers and clicks without www subdomain?

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  kallentz · Member · Oct 15, 2014 at 9:18 pm

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  Hey folks,
  I have a small problem. It’s nothing critical, but it’s annoying on an otherwise perfectly fine working site.

  My WordPress Address (URL) is set to http://www.kalle-online.net/blog
  Same as the Site Address (URL).

  Some months ago that was set to basically the same URL but without the www subdomain. By now all pages work fine with the www subdomain. BUT:

  Every now and then I see pages like the in my Jetpack stats:

  http://kalle-online.net/blog/?attachment_id=634
  http://kalle-online.net/blog/games/civilization/rhyes-and-fall-of-civilization/ethiopia/

  Those pages appear both as clicks (apparently when someone clicks a “legacy” link on some pages) and also as referrers (when someone navigates to those pages and then comes back to a “proper” page with www.

  Now what I don’t understand is:
  How can some single pages be available WITHOUT www at all???
  Because if you directly call this URL, you’re being redirected to http://www.[same URL]
  This works for all pages, including attachment pages.

  So de facto these two are the same pages:
  1. http://kalle-online.net/blog/?attachment_id=634
  2. http://kalle-online.net/blog/games/civilization/rhyes-and-fall-of-civilization/ethiopia/rhyes-and-fall-ethiopia-uhv-1915/
  only that the 2nd link correctly redirects to www.

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  timethief · Member · Oct 15, 2014 at 9:24 pm

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  WordPress software strips out the www.

  www is an old protocol from back when everything was under separate server hardware. www (www.example.com) was the web server, mail (mail.example.com) was the mail server, ftp (ftp.example.com) was the FTP server, print (print.example.com) was the print server, etc. These days, everything is run under the web server, making www. redundant and a waste of four characters.

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  kallentz · Member · Oct 15, 2014 at 9:33 pm

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  I understand that and I reckon by now it’s almost a matter of taste whether to run your site old-fashioned with www. or not.

  Nonetheless the WordPress configuration should allow for consistent behavior based on the settings I chose, shouldn’t it?

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  gracejiyoung · Member · Oct 16, 2014 at 5:11 am

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  Hi there,

  It would be best to contact you host regarding this issue as you’re self-hosted and not hosting with us at WordPress.com. We are the support staff at WordPress.com.

  I did a quick search through the .org forums and this may help:

  Search

  Cheers!