In agreement with bm. The domain (eg google.com) handles many services and the www kind of says which service it is using (www, mail, smpt, pop, ftp.). Of course, as www traffic is probably the most.
Understanding the Context
I came across a site that doesn't work when I type in the address with the "www." prefix. The following is an example: if you click on this link, it won't take you to any site, but rather display an Edit: to answer your original question, yes, any member of www-data can now read and execute /var/www (because the last bit of your permissions is 5 = read + exec). But because you haven't. Possible Duplicate: What does wwws mean?
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When I open some websites its being displayed WW2 instead of WWW. What it means and why?