After moving to a new web host my site shows up as example.com instead of http://example.com. What steps do I follow to fix this? The new host is GoDaddy and my site was http:// at the old host.
2 Answers
The http:// part of the URL is known as the "scheme", which defines the protocol you are using. When you are visiting a website, the default protocol is http://. The only other option would be https://.
There is no way for a web connection to specify a URL without at least implying http://, and so, even if you left it off, or a link left it off, your browser would add it. It is completely up to your browser to determine how it would like to display, and if your site used the same protocol, at least in theory, the browser should display the protocol the same way.
There are some things that you may check. You might consider checking whether your old or new site is using https:// instead, which may be displayed differently. For instance, some browsers may choose to use a lock icon beside HTTPS URLs. You might also consider looking to make sure your favicon isn't different. I don't think this would make a difference, but many browsers display that close to the URL, and so it may at least be possible for it to have an affect, and I have seen moves to new hosts change the favicon.
Overall, there's not much that's likely to make such a change from a web host change. It is possible that there were other changes, such as a browser update, change to settings, etc., which cause the difference. However even if there were a difference, it likely would not affect your visitors as long as they intend to visit the URL with HTTP, which is the default.
Although you do not see HTTP on your browser, every website is using HTTP to display the data.
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web.
http://will not be displayed again (so there's nothing wrong with your site).