The search www theboringmagazine .com points to an online magazine, and the address leads to its home page. The brand is written as one word, theboringmagazine. The site presents itself as a general magazine with its own About page and contact page.
| What does the address open? | The magazine’s home page. |
| Does the www form work? | Yes, it lands on the same home page. |
| Is there a contact page? | Yes, the site has one. |
| Is there an About page? | Yes, the site has one. |
| Is it one word or three? | The address is one word; the name is often spaced as the boring magazine. |
What theboringmagazine is
Theboringmagazine is a general online magazine. Its home page is where the address lands.
The About page describes the site as creating celebrity, entertainment and IT news, and says it includes net worth stories. That is how the site describes itself, and it is the clearest short answer to what lies behind the address.
People usually type www theboringmagazine .com with a stray space before the dot. The space does not change the destination. Browsers and search engines read the intended address and bring up the magazine’s home page.
The same site also appears under the plain form, theboringmagazine com, without any dot at all. All of these spellings aim at the one site.
One mix-up about theboringmagazine spellings
The mix-up: the spaced name and the address are not two different sites. “The boring magazine” is how people say the name aloud. The address squeezes it into a single word, with no spaces and no hyphens.
That is why searches such as the boringmagazine, with the gap in the middle of the name, still point at the same place. A search engine treats the odd spacing as a variation of the same brand and returns the same results.
Why it happens: spaces are not allowed inside a web address. Anyone writing the name by hand adds them naturally, then drops them when they type into the address bar. Search boxes forgive both habits, which is why every version of the phrase yields similar results.
A second small confusion is the ending. The “com” is part of the address, not part of the magazine’s title. In the run-together form theboringmagazinecom, the dot has simply been lost.
Terms a newcomer meets first
Domain name. This is the part of the address that identifies the site, here theboringmagazine followed by its ending. It is what the reader types or searches for.
The www prefix. It is a leading label that many sites accept in front of the domain. For this site, typing the address with www in front leads to the same home page as typing it without.
Home page, About page and contact page. The home page is where the address lands. The About page is where the site describes its own purpose. The site also has a contact page. Readers who type contact theboringmagazine or theboringmagazine contact are usually looking for it.
An address next to a site name
A web address and a site name look alike but do different jobs. The address is exact and has to be spelled correctly to reach the page. The name is looser and can be spoken, spaced or capitalised in any way.
Take website theboringmagazine as an example. It is a search phrase, not an address. A search engine reads it as a request for the magazine’s own site, and shows the home page among the results.
The address, by contrast, goes straight to the server without needing any interpretation. Four typed forms of the address, with or without www and with or without a trailing slash, all end up on the same home page. A search phrase gives the reader a list to choose from, while a typed address skips the list.
How addresses and domain names fit into the web
Every site on the web sits behind a domain name, a readable label that stands in for a numeric machine address. Domains are built from a name, a dot and an ending such as com. Together they let readers remember a site without memorising numbers.
The www label is a convention. Many sites set up both the plain and the www form and make one forward to the other. The reader sees the final form in the address bar once the page has loaded.
For general safety, reaching a site by a saved bookmark or by typing its name into a search engine is steadier than following a link in an unexpected message.
What happens behind a typed address
First, the browser takes the text typed in the bar and strips the stray spaces and capital letters that do not matter. Whatever the reader typed, such as theboringmagazine com or www theboringmagazine.com, is read as a request for the domain.
Second, the browser asks a directory service which machine holds that domain. The service replies with a numeric location, and the browser connects to it, usually over an encrypted connection.
Third, the site may forward the request. Here, the www form and the plain form both end on the magazine’s home page, so the reader reaches the same page either way.
Finally, the home page loads. The whole chain takes a moment and needs nothing from the reader beyond the typed address.
Search phrasings and what each is after
Readers reach for several phrasings. Each one aims at a slightly different thing.
- www theboringmagazine .com: the address, typed with a stray space. The reader wants the home page.
- www theboringmagazine.com: the same address spelled correctly. It lands on the home page too.
- theboringmagazine com: the address with the dot replaced by a space. Again the home page is the goal.
- theboringmagazinecom: the address with the dot dropped. Search engines read it as the same domain.
- theboringmagazine: the bare brand. The reader wants the magazine itself, often its home page.
- the boring magazine and the boringmagazine: the spoken name, spaced in two different ways. Both lead to the same brand.
- website theboringmagazine: a request for the magazine’s own site rather than coverage about it.
- contact theboringmagazine and theboringmagazine contact: a search for the contact page, which the site has.