Let me preface by saying that I very much prefer the look and simplicity of naked domains – i.e. http://example.com vs http://www.example.com – and everything I do I try to use naked domains.

The devs working on Wordpress Multi-User, or MU, have similar thoughts on the no-www domain preference, but do they kindly make their case with suggestions and education? No, they ram the no-www mantra down your throat, hardcoding multiple and irreversible blocks of code in the setup and load scripts that expressly forbid a user from ever using a www. subdomain! Their reasoning for this seamingly arbitrary dictation? I can’t seem to find one that isn’t based on their own personal preferences.

For the most part, the MU community seems to agree with this decision as a sound one! Wow, does anyone else see a major lapse in judgement here? Here’s an abbreviated forum thread on the subject, names removed to protect the innocent:

Smart Person: Wordpress MU forcess no-www. This is a huge mistake!

Person 1: Set up your server to forward www to non-www, everything will be ok

Smart Person: No, it won’t. Why should I change my entire site structure to accomodate this arbitrary decision?

Person: Do redirects and xml sitemaps so that google re-indexes your site with no www.

Smart Person: You’re missing the point! I want a subdomain!

Person: So install MU on a subdomain like ‘blogs.example.com’

Smart Person: *sigh* ok, how about this subdomain – ‘www.example.com’!?

It just seems so silly to me that they have an unfounded, non-technical bias against ‘www’ as a subdomain. They support any other subdomain except for ‘www’!

A hack to fix this on install

Warning: This is definitely just a ‘hack’ and will most likely break on upgrade! And unfortunately, I was unable to revers the no-www effects after a complete installation, this has to be done before a fresh install.

This is for version 2.6.

In index-install.php make the following changes:

# comment out lines 238, 239:
	//if( substr( $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_HOST' ], 0, 4 ) == 'www.' )
		//$hostname = str_replace( "www.", "", $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_HOST' ] );

# comment out lines 365, 366:
	//if( substr( $domain, 0, 4 ) == 'www.' )
		//$domain = substr( $domain, 4 );

# comment out lines 475-482:
		/*
		if( substr( $_POST[ 'basedomain' ], 0, 4 ) == 'www.' ) {
			printheader();
			nowww();
			continue;
		}
		*/
# comment out line 489:
		//$_SERVER[ 'HTTP_HOST' ] = str_replace( 'www.', '', $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_HOST' ] );

In wpmu-settings.php make the following changes:

# comment out lines 9, 10:
//if( substr( $domain, 0, 4 ) == 'www.' )
	//$domain = substr( $domain, 4 );