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Comment by fjabre | Hacker News Reader

Yep. Same here: design.

Well that and we've spent so much time on the main app that we don't have a workable login yet - our login process is akin to 37signals where we subdomain the account i.e. yourcompany.domain.com so it's not that straight forward.

So for us it's literally too early to release since no one could sign up.

One thing we could do is have a signup with an email for news of our pending release... but we're still fine tuning exactly what message we want to release with.

This may be a huge mistake on our part but only time will tell. I'll be sure to share our experience releasing 'late', good or bad, with the HN community.

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Why the subdomain? Can someone explain why a lot of app are doing it? Personally, I avoid using an app that uses a subdomain.

I believe it makes it easier to partition traffic and different subdomains can have different configurations.

At a guess, I'd say because it's a popular feature (appeals to vanity AND is easier to remember) that simultaneously makes it easier to load balance.

A few reasons off the top of my head where subdomains make sense: 1. Letting users override subdomain with a custom domain (ala Posterous) 2. White-labeling (esp. in combination with #1) 3. SEO - last I researched, Google sees virtual hosts on same IP as separate entities, so if your clients use a custom domain and you have a "Powered by" backlink, you'll get some SEO juice

It's the easiest way for us to direct them to their own VM and database.

It also seems to work pretty well for all the 37signals apps and and few others that segment this way.

Ok, if you have a special case for your app and it uses virtual machines and things like that, I would understand.

But, talking about them, why 37signals are doing it? They have "normal" web applications that don't require that kind of separation to be efficient.

37Signals could probably do it some other way but this was the most convenient way for them it seems.

They probably do it for the same reason we do: easy to direct traffic to different DBs and VMs this way, instead of waiting for the request to come in and direct it some other way.

There might also be an added value to the business/account seeing their name in the url... Not sure about that one though.

Why do you specifically avoid it?

I sometimes found myself going to 37signals.com to access my basecamp project, and couldn't find a clear login box anywhere and felt lost and frustrated.

Like bemmu says, I don't remember where to log. If it's well-known site, I can live with it. If it's a new application that I just want to try, I just know that I will forget where to go.

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