Hacker News Reader

I get very uneasy when I see a '-' in a url. Something really spammy about it. I'd be inclined to just cancel the transaction on seeing that url.

It's like watching a commercial for eMusic or something and seeing their site advertised with an arbitrary number in front of the service's name, like 73emusic.com. That url doesn't really exist, but I've seen it a bunch of times before.

View on HN

I couldn't agree with you more. There was a comment posted on the blog about why they didn't go with charge.37signals.com instead. I would think this would be better since it contains the real domain. I too am curious why they didn't use the subdomain route.

I think the problem with a domain like charge.37signals.com is that many users don't understand how to type it in the address box (e.g. some will add www before it). If you've watched users try to enter URLs with subdomains in the address box you've likely experienced this.

Good point, I didn't even think of that and it is true. One option would be to add a CNAME entry for the www portion on the subdomain. That way if someone did it would route correctly.

They could also purchase the full domain name (charge37signals.com) and have it redirect to charge.37signals.com; that way they account for all possible permutations.

That's true, but probably only for a very small group (HN readers and the like)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com