FYI: Having the three letters “www” in front of one’s domain name is entirely optional. Going into all the details of why that’s the case would be extremely geeky and confusing, so I’ll just leave it at that.
However, allowing people to use both http://pepidemic.com and http://www.pepidemic.com can cause problems with search engine indexing, so it’s generally a good idea to force visitors to use one or the other. And just today I decided which to do! (On going to my webhost’s control panel to change the settings, though, I discovered that I had actually decided long ago, but had merely forgotten about it. Figures.)
So now, if anyone attempts to access http://pepidemic.com, they’ll be sent smack-dab to the exact same place, but with the dubyas! Why, you ask? Just because. I kinda decided at random (actually, there are deep aesthetic and historical reasons working in my subconscious that I myself do not fully comprehend).
For some, however, the question attains near-religious significance. Consider No-WWW, an advocacy group that believes the ol’ prefix should be done away with (their site explains why things have been the way they have, and why they should be the way they say). And their antithesis: the identical-looking site Extra-WWW, the folks who believe we actually need six dubyas per webpage!
But the Pep and I take the middle route: three’s enough for me.