browser cache - Firefox says "server not found" because it's adding WWW. How do I stop this?

This is very frustrating.

I have been accessing servername.local on Firefox. That's its URL. No www.

At some time, servername.local ceased to be available and I got an error message: "Server not found". Fair enough.

However, Firefox didn't just try servername.local, it tried www.servername.local as well. "Server not found" again.

The problem is, now that servername.local is back up and running (I can get to it with other browsers and by IP address), Firefox always tries for www.servername.local, no matter if I type in the correct non-WWW URL or use a bookmark.

I cleared the cache, I cleared the history. No change. I flushed the DNS cache, that didn't help either.

Any suggestions?

Answer

Firefox is utilizing Domain guessing. It is an option that will automatically insert www or .com so that you don’t have to.

But, you don’t want that www., and there is a way to shut it off. The option to shut off domain guessing also requires shutting off keyword search for the changes to take place.

Changing Keyword search:

1. Type about:config in the location bar and hit enter. You will get a message, "This might void your warranty" pop up. Click the “I’ll be careful, I promise.” button.

2. Type Keyword.enabled in the search field and double click the keyword.enabled preference to set the value to false.

That is the Keyword Search part taken care of. Now to shutting off domain guessing.

In the search field, type fixup and double click on browser.fixup.alternate.enabled so that it will go to false.

All done, no more WWW or .com.

More to be learnerd here: Mozilla Support