Hacker News Reader

Comment by mardifoufs | Hacker News Reader

Wait why is the UK gov using a netlify.app link? I'm not a web dev so I'm not sure if that's common or more convenient

They're not, dunno where that other link came from but it's not the official. Sneaky

https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/

This is my side project, I'm a dev currently contracting at DfE. This library and the form builder[0] make working with the design system easier for Rails devs.

[0] https://govuk-form-builder.netlify.app/

Well, why not? It's a great host with a whole bunch of features you'd have to invent yourself otherwise like feature branch previews. It's a static site/documentation site afterall.

If I wanted to appear/be professional/institutional/official I'd use a custom domain though. Which i assume netlify supports, let's look... sure https://docs.netlify.com/domains-https/custom-domains/

In this case to a proper government domain... aha, I bet there's some policy against pointing .gov.uk hostnames to a third-party platform?

>In this case to a proper government domain... aha, I bet there's some policy against pointing .gov.uk hostnames to a third-party platform?

Some guidance that might be relevant: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/use-your-govuk-domain-name?step-...

Doesn't seem to rule out using a .gov.uk domain name for something hosted on netlify.

I agree it looks cheesy and makes me wonder if it's really official government documetnation, without a .gov.uk hostname (and SSL cert, naturally).

former netlify employee here. all sites on netlify have a netlify subdomain, that doesnt go away when you add a custom domain. its just useful for deploy previews and stuff, content is basically the same. nothing untoward here

I think we're misunderstanding each other. I'd expect an official UK government site hosted on netlify to have a custom .gov.uk domain and to use that to refer to the site. Same as most large commercial enterprises probably do, right? Instead of using the netlify subdomain as the public host.

Am I misunderstanding something?

It's my side project and definitely not official. It's a library aimed at making it easy to use the official components[0] Rails-friendly.

[0] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/

I believe it's about not using their domain as whole.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com