[ARCHIVED] Sub Domain or 2nd Domain

[ravmitterhoff]

Is it better to run canvas on a subdomain of the university website or on a second domain like .net ? What are the issues?

[kona]

ravmitterhoff, this isn't my area of expertise, but I'm going to try and help by sharing this with the Canvas Developers‌ group in the Community. They are the ones who do more of the back-end/programming type of stuff and should hopefully be able to address your question!

[stuart_ryan · Accepted solution]

Hi ravmitterhoff,

I would say this really comes down to mostly a branding discussion, but a couple of technical things to consider as well.

90% I would say comes down to marketing, when we implemented, we decided to keep it as a subdomain of our institutions domain. It is easier for students to remember off the top of their heads, matches the rest of the branding of the university, and in the IT world where phishing scams are an unfortunate norm, lets our students know that they are on an official University site.

The technical considerations that came to mind for us included also ensuring that (if we desired), we could use our wildcard SSL certificate that the organisation already had, it also meant that the the DNS, domain registration and such was already taken care of (and one less thing to worry about).

In the grand scheme of things, I don't foresee any technical reason or limitation that would preclude you going 100% either way, it really would come down to institutional preference. For the reasons in the marketing section, my personal preference and recommendation, would be to go with something like canvas.yourinstitution.edu (to match your existing URL), rather than registering a new .net.

If you have some specifics that you are concerned about (or have intricate integration requirements), if you could detail them further we could help and see if any of them would be a concern?

Hope that helps!
Stuart

[ravmitterhoff]

Thanks. I went with the subdomain.

[stuart_ryan]

No worries at all, always happy to help out!