Every website used to be like “www.example.com”. Now I rarely encounter this “www.”. Why did it even exist and where has it gone? I also used to run into websites with legitimate domains, but “ww1.” instead of “www.”, these were probably phishing sites, but how did this actually work on top of legitimate domains?
I’ve always made the ‘www.’ work for any site I’ve administered, but they immediately redirect with a 301 to the same url without it. It’s never been necessary, and I’ve always found it an eyesore.
Start with reading the documentation that explains this config:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1$1 [R=301,L]