Subdomains

I know this topic has been discussed shed-loads of times but...

I want to create an ssl certificate for my payment bits. They're in a folder called payments and when punters go to pay I want to direct them to a subdomain of payments. I've set the asp code up as directed by DASP to forward requests for the subdomain to the correct folder, but I get http://payments.domain.com/paymentswhich looks crap. What's the point of a subdomain if it just makes the address longer. I can write crap code on my own without paying an extra $10 a month thanks!

Why can't I have something like the BBC do? Their site is http://www.bbc.co.uk and the news site is http://news.bbc.co.uk. When you type the subdomain you get directed to the subdomain. Click a link there and you get http://news.bbc.co.uk/page.asp (for example). This is what I want.

The BBC don't use frames so please don't advise that this is the way to go. Frames mask the URL permanently which isn't what I want, and anyway they're crap!

SSL is very specific about the name of the certified bit so I want to get this setup so that I can get the certificate sorted. I can't set it up as domain.com/payments and change it later, but if I can't get this sorted (like the BBC have) I'll have to abandon the idea and revert back to domain.com/payments

Any help would be appreciated

 

In IIS, the only way to have payments.domain.com to pull up the contents in the /payments directory of domain.com is to create another virtual site for payments.domain.com. DiscountASP only allows one virtual IIS site per account.

Aristotle

DiscountASP.NET
www.DiscountASP.NET

 

Surely then, subdomains are a waste of time/money? they don't provide any benefit over using a straightforwad subfolder.

The benefit of subdomains, to my mind, is that the user is led to a simple address for their browsing. If all it does is confuse the address further by adding the subdomain to the beginning and then still following the domain structure as before, then I can see no benefit.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

 

You can really have subdomains do anything you want, you just have to do it programmaticly.

For example, you could have two different user controls with the body of two different pages (one for news, one for your home page). Then the first thing you do in your request is look at the subdomain being requested and choose which control to show. To the user, they'll just see the content they expect at that page (i.e. either news.bbc.com or www.bbc.com)

The redirect to a folder thing is really just a convenience to keep pages totally separate when dealing with subdomains, but I use subdomains effectively without any redirect to folders.

Does that make sense?

 

Yes, it makes sense, but I can't say I agree with the concept.



To my mind the 'point' of subdomains is to provide a site within a site. http://news.bbc.com is a classic example. The BBC site is a huge mess of info. If you're only interested in the news the subdomain allows punters to easily access the data they need in a convenient form. Admin sections are another good example. Regularly you will see the admin functionality of a site within the subdomain of http://admin.site.com and all the admin options within that are accessible from that subdomain.


The method you describe, although it clearly works for you, is, to my mind, full of pitfalls. For example, if the page checks to see how the user enters, presumably each subsequent page must also do the same. This is additional processing on every single page that seems unnecessary.


Surely it wouldn't be asking too much of DASP to allow subdomains to be created as new virtual sites within IIS. There isn't any overhead on the IIS box (or a negligible amount anyway) for this to happen. The control panel could easily be ammended to allow a subdomain tool to facilitate this. Subdomains could then be set to point to a folder in the same way as the root. It seems that the current subdomain functionality is a bit of a con really.


Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think most people understand subdomains in the same way as I do.



Post Edited By Moderator (Joel Thoms) : 7/11/2006 11:54:32 PM GMT

 

There are many different uses for subdomains. Within DASP subdomains are no different than a domain pointer (example: www.joel.net or www.joel.tvpointing to the same site). This is why they function this way.


Currently the only way to do what you are asking is to programatically detect the domain name and perform an internal redirect.
I will bring up your point in our next product meeting.






Joel Thoms
DiscountASP.NET
http://www.DiscountASP.NET

 

Hi,


This was posted by Joel in November. Did it get discussed at the next product meeting? If so, is there any chance it will be implemented in the near future? This is still something that I really need.


Also does IIS7 make this functionality any easier to implement (from DASP point of view)?

Post Edited (timfoster) : 12/21/2006 11:11:49 PM GMT