[Sigia-l] Subdomain usability

[James Aylett]

Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote:

> OK so we were talking about two separate things. I would think the
> issue of whether "google.com" should always resolve to
"www.google.com"
> would be universally acknowledged by people on this list as being a
good
> thing, despite DNS gurus telling the world otherwise.

Erm. I think you mean that http://google.com/ should always result in
the same website as http://www.google.com/ - there's no requirement to
upset DNS folk by requiring any kind of resolving equivalence there.
(And occasionally, for the purposes of other services, there are good
reasons not to.)

Really, the rule should be "just make it work". Whatever you type in
that makes some kind of sense, wherever possible, should do the right
thing. Just like Google as a search engine has always tried (and often
succeeded) to do - which makes it slightly ironic that only some
variants of google finance work as expected.

Having said that, although as a matter of course I create appropriate
configuration so that both http://www.foo.bar/ and http://foo.bar/ will
result in the same website, I generally won't bother with both
http://subdomain.foo.bar/ and http://www.subdomain.foo.bar/; but that is
*largely* (rationalising in my head post hoc) because the uses for which
I create things like subdomain.foo.bar tend to only be of interest to
the more technical folk who are likely to just do what I tell them to
do. For new distinct websites I only very rarely use something other
than a new second-level domain (and those rare cases tend to be web
application interfaces that most people will be introduced to by link
rather than by being shouted at - they aren't general
product/info/utility/company websites that you might want to point
someone at from your kitchen).

Cheers,
James

-- 
James Aylett
 Chief Technical Architect
 t 020 7535 9850 f 020 7535 9900
 w http://tangozebra.com/

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