5 ms·

I have an off-topic question: This is the second company (after GitLab) I see with an “about” subdomain. Is this a new trend of using “about.x.com” for the mark

I have an off-topic question: This is the second company (after GitLab) I see with an “about” subdomain. Is this a new trend of using “about.x.com” for the marketing website and “x.com” for the web app? Is there a blog post or discussion about this?

usrusr 9y ago
Browsers are thankfully highlighting the https-verified part of the URL (hostname) relative to the rest, so that a "paypal.com.fake.com" phishing attack is easier to spot. It was just a matter of time before UX people would put that highlighting to creative use. I like it. On the technological side, I guess separate hostnames might make some ops things a little easier. But that alone can hardly be the reason. Easier and good looks can. Also: In a large scale outage, an about.x.com that is not running on your main cloud provider could be valuable for status updates, because far more people would know about about.x.com than about some status.x.com you might have if your "about" content was on the main hostname.
- jrimbault 9y ago
  I don't see this highlighting in the latest Chrome (60.0.3something, I just updated it). Is there a specific flag to enable ?
  - IshKebab 9y ago
    I think it might be a mobile-only thing.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Firefox and Safari also have it on Desktop: https://i.imgur.com/6lDFgIp.png https://i.imgur.com/6lDFgIp.png
    - jrimbault 9y ago
      Ah! I see it. I expected something much more obvious.
      - usrusr 9y ago
        And I expected something which includes the subdomain part in the highlighting. Doing a little "TN-display dance" I see that Chrome highlights news.ycombinator.com, whereas Firefox only highlights ycombinator.com which kind of undermines my point (and seems slightly wrong to me, as this seems to be a certificate for the exact third level domain, not a wildcard under the second level).
greenhouse_gas 9y ago
In addition to it hurting SEO
- mercer 9y ago
  How does it hurt SEO?
  - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
    SEO "trust" doesn't spread to subdomains
sytse 9y ago
At GitLab we first used www dot the marketing site and the apex for the app but many people assumed they would have the same content. That is why we introduced about. Cool to see we might have started a trend.
- tokenizerrr 9y ago
  Wow, never noticed that. When did you change? It would have confused me so much.

usrusr 9y ago

Browsers are thankfully highlighting the https-verified part of the URL (hostname) relative to the rest, so that a "paypal.com.fake.com" phishing attack is easier to spot. It was just a matter of time before UX people would put that highlighting to creative use. I like it. On the technological side, I guess separate hostnames might make some ops things a little easier. But that alone can hardly be the reason. Easier and good looks can. Also: In a large scale outage, an about.x.com that is not running on your main cloud provider could be valuable for status updates, because far more people would know about about.x.com than about some status.x.com you might have if your "about" content was on the main hostname.

jrimbault 9y ago
I don't see this highlighting in the latest Chrome (60.0.3something, I just updated it). Is there a specific flag to enable ?
- IshKebab 9y ago
  I think it might be a mobile-only thing.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Firefox and Safari also have it on Desktop: https://i.imgur.com/6lDFgIp.png https://i.imgur.com/6lDFgIp.png
  - jrimbault 9y ago
    Ah! I see it. I expected something much more obvious.
    - usrusr 9y ago
      And I expected something which includes the subdomain part in the highlighting. Doing a little "TN-display dance" I see that Chrome highlights news.ycombinator.com, whereas Firefox only highlights ycombinator.com which kind of undermines my point (and seems slightly wrong to me, as this seems to be a certificate for the exact third level domain, not a wildcard under the second level).

greenhouse_gas 9y ago

In addition to it hurting SEO

mercer 9y ago
How does it hurt SEO?
- greenhouse_gas 9y ago
  SEO "trust" doesn't spread to subdomains

sytse 9y ago

At GitLab we first used www dot the marketing site and the apex for the app but many people assumed they would have the same content. That is why we introduced about. Cool to see we might have started a trend.

tokenizerrr 9y ago
Wow, never noticed that. When did you change? It would have confused me so much.