The following is a short rant intended for all those who design comment forms on websites:
When you have a box that says ‘homepage’ or ‘website’ it is absurd to make people type http://www.mysite.com. The HTTP means Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Every website in the universe uses this transfer protocol, so making someone type it is always redundant.
The same goes for ‘www.’ Homepages and websites are on the world wide web. They aren’t mail servers or any other sort of networked beast.
In conclusion, I should be able to type sindark.com and your comment form should understand it.
P.S. Even more unforgivable than sites that produce errors when ‘http’ and ‘www’ are lacking are the small minority that produce absurd URLs when you enter a site name in X.com format. I have seen sites where putting that yields a link to: “http://www.siteIamcommentingon.com/X.com.” Nightmare!
P.P.S. See www is deprecated for the argument that having to say ‘www’ is unnecessary in all circumstances, not just when filling out comment forms.
Can’t you just type in the address? I always assumed most blogging engines would just use whatever you put in and put it in the link to your name… most browsers these days should default to http:// if its omitted from a link, and most sites either redirect or mirror with the www. omitted. Its the browser that needs to support it btw, not the website – if you put in foo.com and it can’t find it, its likely a browser issue… of course, i could easily be wrong about all of this.
One site that forces you to type out ‘http’ and ‘www’ is:
http://www.desmogblog.com/
Bob,
I am not talking about the URL you put in the location bar to go to the site. I am talking about the ‘website’ box in the comment form. Whether it demands the inclusion of ‘www’ or ‘http’ or not has nothing to do with your browser.
Another guilty site:
http://meganbutcher.com/