Comments on: Subdomains + Development = Sucks

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 03:58:08 +0000

I think everyone has come to a great conclusion, but what is the best method for creating ‘folders’ ala http://www.mysite.com/username. I assume this would be done by adding a rule to the apache rewrite engine? Or is it an actual folder? Thoughts?

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 17:07:05 +0000

Those are two very good points. Why make more work for yourself and require more money for SSL certificates when using a folder name will work just as well? Save yourself a headache and heed this sage advice.

By: Derek Organ

Derek Organ — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:58:32 +0000

yea i see your points and we made the same choice a good while ago at http://1timetracking.com. We have pretty big databases for each user and each domain is for a company so i think it makes more sense. I think the subdomain idea gives the end user more ownership of what they have purchased or subscribed to.

I do think in your situation it probable wasn’t needed. I think like with basecamp if the users have other external users coming to the app then there is value in it.

By: Martin Bialasinski

Martin Bialasinski — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 13:53:10 +0000

Agreed about the phishing problem. http://wufoo.com/forms/auth/welcome/ is no better than http://auth.wufoo.com/forms/welcome/

You don’t need to use the NetInfo Manager. You can instruct it to use /etc/hosts. Just put this into /etc/lookupd/hosts:

LookupOrder Cache FF NI DNS DS

(FF mean flat file = /etc/hosts)

You might have to kill -HUP the lookupd.

By: Harry

Harry — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:12:26 +0000

I can see your point when it comes to ssl. One domain is easier and cheaper. I can see the point about phishing, but this will always be so if you allow a user to insert a form into a page. Any page.

I wouldn't, however, say developing with subdomains is a problem. I have used/tested them on both mac and windows test servers without problem. My only pain was adding the subdomains to the host/NetInfo Manager one at a time. Not a problem for testing as you will never have to do more than 20 or so. Subdomains are easy for end users to remember, make them feel special and make the general url structure shorter and easier to pass between friends.

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:45:26 +0000

As for the phishing example in #24: Now is http://wufoo.com/forms/auth/welcome/ (the folder variation) any better than http://auth.wufoo.com/forms/welcome/ (the sub-domain variation)?

By: PohEe.com

PohEe.com — Tue, 29 May 2007 02:23:45 +0000

By using subdomain, it save u some money from purchase new domain.

By: PJ Hyett

PJ Hyett — Mon, 28 May 2007 00:04:29 +0000

I know you guys are a PHP shop, but in Rails we’ve done stuff like this in the past:

# config/routes.rb
if RAILS_ENV == 'development'
  map.connect '/mobile', :controller => { :mobile }
else
  map.connect '', :controller => { :mobile }, :subdomain => { 'm' }
end

So, in production http://m.chow.com works, but for development you go to http://localhost:3000/mobile so you don’t need to bother with /etc/hosts.

By: Ben Hirsch

Ben Hirsch — Sun, 27 May 2007 17:06:09 +0000

I agree that this adds many extra degrees of difficulty for development but you end up sacrificing a strength of the app. Having personalized sub-domains may be worth the cause of the pain. I can understand not using them for social network / community type sites, though. In some cases I think I might think twice before signing up for a web service that I knew I would be using quite often and would not have the ability to go to or send a client directly to myDomain.theAppDomain.com. To me, the customer, I believe I would think twice if I knew I might get the subdomain with the competitor’s service. I guess it depends on what’s being offered.

Alternatively, I think it could be smart to give people the subdomain, but just for redirection purposes. So, they could use this: myDomain.theAppDomain.com but it would route (redirect) them to: http://theAppDomain.com/myDomain/ to sign in.

By: xc

xc — Sun, 27 May 2007 10:47:07 +0000

Everyone needs a hug.