Subdomains, xyz.cashboardapp.com > cashboard.xyz.com
I'm not asking to host your code, just be able to link subdomain to my cashboard account. I believe this would encourage clients to pay over the internet if they thought they are still dealing with my website.
resare
shared this idea
12 comments
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Jubair Saidi commented
a good place to start for this might be to look at how ZenDesk does it. they do exactly this. for example I could set cb.p3in.com CNAME to p3in.cashboardapp.com and if I do not have a valid cert uploaded to cashbaord for cb.p3in.com, it would simply forward me to p3in.cashboardapp.com but if I do have a valid cert uploaded, then would use Cashbaord seemingly at cb.p3in.com.
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Eve Lester commented
I think this would be great if it were possible- for now I just have http://collab.designingwitheve.com redirecting to my cashboard - nothing fancy like cloaking, just a simple redirect.
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Jason Smithson
commented
Ran into one possibly much simpler option here over on the UserVoice feedback page.
You could do a DNS CNAME like Google Apps does so that cashboard.yourdomain.com redirected to yourdomain.cashboard.com. That way any links the user initially sees in an email would be to your domain but you avoid all the trouble of the proxy or application rewrite issues mentioned above. Just a thought.
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Jason Smithson
commented
Apache Proxy and ReverseProxy could solve this without any code changes and with SSL. I've configured Apache Proxies using SSL in production environments like this successfully. The technically adept could set it up themselves if they wanted to without any changes by Cashboard. I could do a proof of concept if anyone is interested.
The steps,
1. DNS for the subdomain pointed to a unique IP on the proxy
2. Proxy would be configured for the subdomain
3. An SSL certificate purchased and provisioned on the proxy server for the subdomainOnce those things are in place the DNS for the subdomain cashboard.yourdomain.com would resolve to the unique IP for that account on the proxy. The proxy would take those requests and forward them to yourdomain.cashboardapp.com and then translate them back and return them to the user.
Several things would have to happen to make this work easy enough for most users and this is actually where I think it gets more tricky than the above.
First whoever runs the proxy has to be able to get an IP for each user then that IP has to be provided to whoever runs the DNS for the domain in question. Then the DNS has to be updated which is often a bit of a support issue.
That plays into the next issue which is people without domains may want or expect Cashboard to be able to provide them with domain registration and DNS hosting. An option to be certain but makes things more complicated. Do you then provide email with that? Wordpress.com and Google Apps are both good examples of how to handle this.
I think that is it. One last note is that the kind of cloaking provided by many hosts and registrars will not work for SSL and I personally would not suggest non-SSL for any financial app. If the issue with wanting your own domain is to gain trust with your users then dumping SSL is a sure way to ruin that quickly.
OK on one really last note, if someone already ran their own Apache SSL host for their domain, they could potentially do https://domain.tld/cashboard/ and proxy it in that subdirectory and use their existing SSL certificate! Keep in mind unless you have a wildcard SSL certificate for your domain, as Cashboard does to do *.cashboardapp.com, you'll need an additional SSL certificate for cashboard.domain.tld.
And yes, some kind of solution here does get my vote!
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robbyvalles
commented
yeah, i definitely would not want a framed solution!
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AdminSeth
(Founder, Cashboard)
commented
@uptimejeff
That may be possible for a few pages - but we use some frame targeting code throughout the app that will eventually break out of that "cloaking" code and break your idea.
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uptimejeff
commented
This is possible, look:
http://client.osxserver.comThis can be done w/ web forwarding/masking/cloaking (whatever the dns service calls it). Networksolutions and godaddy provide this. When someone hits your URL, an invisible frame is setup and the target (cashboard) is loaded (ssl intact) within the frame. But- cashboard notice urls cant be customized. I'd pay $10/mo extra for this feature.
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robbyvalles
commented
i would really want this. even without ssl, is that bad?
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AdminSeth
(Founder, Cashboard)
commented
As far as I understand it - for this to function correctly you'd need to purchase a SSL certificate for the domain name in question - then send it to us so we could install it on our server.
Doesn't seem like a smooth or simple operation...If that's the case I'd probably be against adding it in the near term, or at all.
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AdminSeth
(Founder, Cashboard)
commented
Great suggestion and one I'd like to get done quickly. The only barrier stopping this right now is a problem with SSL certificates. We're covered for *.cashboardapp.com, but if people start accessing the site as cashboard.xyz.com then a SSL security error pops up.
Not sure what we can do to solve that, but I have a query into my server guys to see what's possible.
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resare
commented
I just realized that I used xxx as a variable whereas others might think of a different meaning. Please excuse me on this and if possible change it to "xyz" if it offends anyone or delete it so I could start this one over again.
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resare
commented
In addition to this it would be nice to log them into cashboard with earlier mentioned API if they have already logged into xxx.com
