4 ms·

Subdomains + Development = Sucks: A quick tip from Kevin Hale of Wufoo

36 points by danw 19y ago

tuukkah 19y ago
Not so much suck as have two sides of a coin. Ok, so the article says you may need to buy an SSL certificate for the domain and setup user1.localhost.localdomain in dev machines. On the positive side, your users will be cleanly sandboxed in separate domains, they get slash-free URIs, and you can have simple IP-based load balancing. Any good stories about subdomains? Infogami?
aaroniba 19y ago
For me, even if aiba.wufoo.com and wufoo.com/aiba point to the same IP address and have the same functionality, the former feels more like my site, whereas the latter feels more like my part of someone else's site. If you want to create a service that gives people their own presence on the web, this could make a difference. Alternatively, maybe most users don't pay attention to URLs or look at the distinction above in the same way we developers do. Also, the subdomain strategy seems to have worked well for Blogger. They serve users' pages from *.blogspot.com, and their own pages from *.blogger.com.
- rjb 19y ago
  I agree... I think this idea of ownership is growing as "everyday" web users feel a need to own their online identities and data. We already are seeing this with tools like Weebly. Web developers and techies have enjoyed this luxury for quite some time. One thing I really like about subdomains is that it makes accessing a site very quick... from my address bar I type "new" and news.yc.com pops right up!
timg 19y ago
What I hate is that firefox/IE complain if you don't get one of these paid SSL certificates. The encryption of HTTP traffic should be free and without unneeded burden.
- lupin_sansei 19y ago
  https and SSL are free. It's just that if the certificate is not from a recognised authority it warns you. That's a good thing in my book.
  - timg 19y ago
    That's terrible in my book. What if you are running an entertainment site with lots of subdomains and for every single subdomain the user gets harassed with this question? These certificates have nothing at all to do with "authority." Just think about it, what exactly do they prove? Why should you only be allowed to speak in confidence with well identified parties (not that verisign remotely attempts to identify anyone)? Think carefully. Related: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/new_phishing_tr.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/new_phishing_tr.html
    - lupin_sansei 19y ago
      The Authority provides a way to check the address of a domain name holder and other useful information. It makes it a lot harder for someone to create a spoof domain like https://www.paypa1.com and for Paypal's real address to be displayed in the certificate when you click on it. Basically Verisign and co stake their reputation on checking the details of the certificate applicant. I don't see what's terrible about browser makers trusting certain authorities. It's useful to the user, and there's more than one authority so less chance of abuse. The only alternative is no authorities, or a government bureaucracy issuing them. I don't see how either of those 2 options is superior to the current situation. There's nothing stopping you creating a free Certification Authority, it's just that you'd have to persuade the browser makers to trust you.
      - timg 19y ago
        """I don't see what's terrible about browser makers trusting certain authorities""" Because the authorities trust anyone who pays them 20 bucks. THEN, the users trust any site where the address bar turns yellow. Do you see the break in the chain here?
waleedka 19y ago
One benefit of subdomains is that you can set cookies for each subdomain separately. For example, I can be logged in to my user1.example.com and user2.example.com both at the same time without having to logout and then login again.
kal-el 19y ago
thanks for the note kevin!
aaroniba 19y ago
Question: does the choice to use subdomains or subdirectories affect the stats that appear on traffic measuring sites like Alexa?
- tuukkah 19y ago
  It affects some of the measuring sites, and web crawler speeds etc. Now Alexa implicitly says it doesn't affect their stats, but it would be nice to know something about their algorithm for distinguishing "recognized personal pages": http://www.alexa.com/site/help/?index=12 http://www.alexa.com/site/help/?index=12 (edit: corrected the link to point to traffic rankings faq)
sbraford 19y ago
I haven't implemented mass user-generated subdomains in PHP or Python, but it certainly was a snap to do in Rails. User-created subdomains didn't seem like they really caught on until 37 Signals started having huge success.

36 points by danw 19y ago

Not so much suck as have two sides of a coin. Ok, so the article says you may need to buy an SSL certificate for the domain and setup user1.localhost.localdomain in dev machines. On the positive side, your users will be cleanly sandboxed in separate domains, they get slash-free URIs, and you can have simple IP-based load balancing. Any good stories about subdomains? Infogami?

aaroniba 19y ago

For me, even if aiba.wufoo.com and wufoo.com/aiba point to the same IP address and have the same functionality, the former feels more like my site, whereas the latter feels more like my part of someone else's site. If you want to create a service that gives people their own presence on the web, this could make a difference. Alternatively, maybe most users don't pay attention to URLs or look at the distinction above in the same way we developers do. Also, the subdomain strategy seems to have worked well for Blogger. They serve users' pages from *.blogspot.com, and their own pages from *.blogger.com.

rjb 19y ago
I agree... I think this idea of ownership is growing as "everyday" web users feel a need to own their online identities and data. We already are seeing this with tools like Weebly. Web developers and techies have enjoyed this luxury for quite some time. One thing I really like about subdomains is that it makes accessing a site very quick... from my address bar I type "new" and news.yc.com pops right up!

timg 19y ago

What I hate is that firefox/IE complain if you don't get one of these paid SSL certificates. The encryption of HTTP traffic should be free and without unneeded burden.

lupin_sansei 19y ago
https and SSL are free. It's just that if the certificate is not from a recognised authority it warns you. That's a good thing in my book.
- timg 19y ago
  That's terrible in my book. What if you are running an entertainment site with lots of subdomains and for every single subdomain the user gets harassed with this question? These certificates have nothing at all to do with "authority." Just think about it, what exactly do they prove? Why should you only be allowed to speak in confidence with well identified parties (not that verisign remotely attempts to identify anyone)? Think carefully. Related: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/new_phishing_tr.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/new_phishing_tr.html
  - lupin_sansei 19y ago
    The Authority provides a way to check the address of a domain name holder and other useful information. It makes it a lot harder for someone to create a spoof domain like https://www.paypa1.com and for Paypal's real address to be displayed in the certificate when you click on it. Basically Verisign and co stake their reputation on checking the details of the certificate applicant. I don't see what's terrible about browser makers trusting certain authorities. It's useful to the user, and there's more than one authority so less chance of abuse. The only alternative is no authorities, or a government bureaucracy issuing them. I don't see how either of those 2 options is superior to the current situation. There's nothing stopping you creating a free Certification Authority, it's just that you'd have to persuade the browser makers to trust you.
    - timg 19y ago
      """I don't see what's terrible about browser makers trusting certain authorities""" Because the authorities trust anyone who pays them 20 bucks. THEN, the users trust any site where the address bar turns yellow. Do you see the break in the chain here?

waleedka 19y ago

One benefit of subdomains is that you can set cookies for each subdomain separately. For example, I can be logged in to my user1.example.com and user2.example.com both at the same time without having to logout and then login again.

kal-el 19y ago

thanks for the note kevin!

aaroniba 19y ago

Question: does the choice to use subdomains or subdirectories affect the stats that appear on traffic measuring sites like Alexa?

tuukkah 19y ago
It affects some of the measuring sites, and web crawler speeds etc. Now Alexa implicitly says it doesn't affect their stats, but it would be nice to know something about their algorithm for distinguishing "recognized personal pages": http://www.alexa.com/site/help/?index=12 http://www.alexa.com/site/help/?index=12 (edit: corrected the link to point to traffic rankings faq)

sbraford 19y ago

I haven't implemented mass user-generated subdomains in PHP or Python, but it certainly was a snap to do in Rails. User-created subdomains didn't seem like they really caught on until 37 Signals started having huge success.