Hilariously, I bet it's because their Active Directory domain is the same as their public domain, and it becomes a massive pain in the ass to hostname the root domain. Yes, externally you can do it just fine, but then it's not consistent internally on their private network.

One solution is you run IIS (or any other web server) purely as a permanent redirect for the internal host, but it would then need to run on each domain controller which brings its own set of issues.

Is the DMV a .com or a .gov? Because it should be a dot gov — but Texas has stupidly put some of their government websites on dot coms.

When I try going to txdmv.gov, I don't get the same server, but I do go to a machine that http-redirects my browser to www.txdmv.gov.

$ wget http://txdmv.gov/
--2024-04-10 17:01:26--  http://txdmv.gov/
Resolving txdmv.gov (txdmv.gov)... 168.44.227.138
Connecting to txdmv.gov (txdmv.gov)|168.44.227.138|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://www.txdmv.gov [following]
--2024-04-10 17:01:26--  https://www.txdmv.gov/
Resolving www.txdmv.gov (www.txdmv.gov)... 3.222.136.66, 18.234.22.91
Connecting to www.txdmv.gov (www.txdmv.gov)|3.222.136.66|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/html]
Saving to: ‘index.html’

index.html              [  <=>              ] 203.91K   986KB/s    in 0.2s    

2024-04-10 17:01:27 (986 KB/s) - ‘index.html’ saved [208802]
$

EDIT: Ah, apparently it redirects http://txdmv.gov/, but not https://txdmv.gov/.

considers

Based on @[email protected]'s comment, maybe some browsers interpret a bare hostname without protocol specifier as an http address, and some as an https address.

huh? I just entered txdmv.gov and it worked just fine. It redirected to www. but otherwise not required from end user

Edit: on mobile it’s broken … (txdmv.gov does not redirect. Only loads a banner. Have to type www.txdmv.gov)

My favorite is sometimes when I'm on hold the announcements tell you to visit their website for faster service (would if I could have!). It reads out the URL to you like "double-you double-you double-you dot this stupid company dot com. Again, that's double-you double-you double-you dot this stupid company dot com"

And if you actually type the "www", you get redirected to the base domain without it.

But it’s the last www site left, right?

If you find the relevant department and start harassing them on Twitter and other socials at least once a day they will eventually fix it. This has happened before with other departments and security issues. My record is eight days.