Subdomains? No, thanks!
— September 22 2009
Teambox 1, as many other apps of the 2.0 age, used subdomains for client accounts. Not any more.
We’re moving to paths for every project.
- Teambox 1: http://project.teamboxapp.com
- Teambox 2: http://teambox.com/project
Why? Project subdomains suggest the web will only contain pages related to it, as if it was an isolated site. People would think about one.teambox.com and two.teambox.com as different sites, that have nothing to do with each other.
On the contrary, having paths makes more sense. Look at the url carefully, and read it aloud:
http://teambox.com/trip-to-barcelona/conversations
You’re first of all in teambox.com, next in your project “A trip to Barcelona” and inside its conversations. It’s easy to imagine that you can move to other projects in the same level, like “Garage Sale”.
Beyond that, it sets your subdomains free: You can now use http://blog.teambox.com, http://help.teambox.com, and others. You can use extra long project names without it looking ugly (a-very-long-project-name-is-hard-to-read.teambox.com), and cookies relate to all your additional services in other subdomains.
So maybe the time has come to abandon this subdomain trend, like some have already done.