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Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

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31–40 of 85 posts

Re: Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

#32
post #24
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you handle SSL with CNAMEs? I'd like to offer CNAMEs for my customers as well, but the lack of SSL support means I don't for security. Suggestions?

Tricky one. I don't think there's any way to solve that, other than creating certificates for every CNAME - which is too expensive and complicated for your clients. I've run into this with Campaign Monitor and they simply don't do SSL for CNAMEs. Since they do everything else perfectly, I'm assuming there's no way to solve this problem.

It's really a major deficiency on how things work together (SSL, HTTP, CNAMEs)

Maybe the solution is having stuff.blah.com redirect to blah.com/stuff and do SSL from there

Ugly, but it gets the job done.

Re: Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

#33
post #23
post #4

I think it's a GREAT idea. Now, this might just be me, and I don't want to sound negative, or take anything away from the effort you've obviously put into making this really good, but ... For $120 / year I think, hmm I could probably build something that does this (just for me) in an hour, and it'd be fun! However at $10 per YEAR, I would think it's a steal and jump at it. Not suggesting you should drop your pants on…

You've got to be kidding me. $10 a year may as well be nothing. I wouldn't do anything for anybody for $10/year. I probably couldn't even be bothered invoicing you. You're right that it's a very simple product, though. $5 a month with a 20% discount for $50/yr sounds fair to me. I like it though. Your textbook well executed MVP. The price might need some tweaks but hey, it's a product. Well done Jonas.

The point isn't if it's worth it to the developer to charge you that much. It's an automated billing process. The point is that the price point is low enough that people won't think twice about paying it. In this case, more than 5 times as many as would go for $50/year.

Re: Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

#34
post #24
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you handle SSL with CNAMEs? I'd like to offer CNAMEs for my customers as well, but the lack of SSL support means I don't for security. Suggestions?

Tricky one. I don't think there's any way to solve that, other than creating certificates for every CNAME - which is too expensive and complicated for your clients. I've run into this with Campaign Monitor and they simply don't do SSL for CNAMEs. Since they do everything else perfectly, I'm assuming there's no way to solve this problem.

You can solve this problem by using a "wildcard certificate". It's like 300$ more expensive than a normal one.

You can test how it works creating your own: http://www.justinsamuel.com/2006/03/11/howto-create-a-self-s...

Re: Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

#35
post #23
post #4

I think it's a GREAT idea. Now, this might just be me, and I don't want to sound negative, or take anything away from the effort you've obviously put into making this really good, but ... For $120 / year I think, hmm I could probably build something that does this (just for me) in an hour, and it'd be fun! However at $10 per YEAR, I would think it's a steal and jump at it. Not suggesting you should drop your pants on…

You've got to be kidding me. $10 a year may as well be nothing. I wouldn't do anything for anybody for $10/year. I probably couldn't even be bothered invoicing you. You're right that it's a very simple product, though. $5 a month with a 20% discount for $50/yr sounds fair to me. I like it though. Your textbook well executed MVP. The price might need some tweaks but hey, it's a product. Well done Jonas.

Thanks for the kind words! The pricing is obviously geared towards agencies, not freelancers. We'll see how it pans out, your feedback is greatly appreciated!

Re: Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

#36
We wrote our own version of this which took about 2 minutes to write.

1. Client hits /support/client-info which generates a specific system error with a unique ID (right 6 digits of a GUID) and pumps browser, error and user context information via log4net into our logging system. Client tells us the error ID.

2. Open monitoring system, type error ID in. It's all there.

Not only that, we use it for error monitoring too.

Re: Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

#37
post #4

I think it's a GREAT idea. Now, this might just be me, and I don't want to sound negative, or take anything away from the effort you've obviously put into making this really good, but ... For $120 / year I think, hmm I could probably build something that does this (just for me) in an hour, and it'd be fun! However at $10 per YEAR, I would think it's a steal and jump at it. Not suggesting you should drop your pants on…

Why make this a pay monthly thing? You should offer a block of uses on a pay-as-you-go scheme, like 20 uses for $10.

Re: Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

#38
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tricky one. I don't think there's any way to solve that, other than creating certificates for every CNAME - which is too expensive and complicated for your clients. I've run into this with Campaign Monitor and they simply don't do SSL for CNAMEs. Since they do everything else perfectly, I'm assuming there's no way to solve this problem.

You can solve this problem by using a "wildcard certificate". It's like 300$ more expensive than a normal one. You can test how it works creating your own: http://www.justinsamuel.com/2006/03/11/howto-create-a-self-s...

You can solve this problem by using a "wildcard certificate". It's like 300$ more expensive than a normal one.

Incorrect. You cannot create a wildcard domain for every domain in existence. That would somewhat undermine the whole point of SSL.

Edit: I think I misunderstood slightly. You're correct if you mean using the same domain for clients (e.g. client1.domain.com, anotherclient.domain.com), but not if you want clients to be able to use their own domains with your service.

On a related note, StartSSL (http://www.startssl.com) are a cheap option for wildcard certificates, and SSL certificates in general, since they only charge to validate your identity - you can issue as many certificates as you want (for domains you own) thereafter.

Re: Show HN: Stop asking your clients "What browser are you on?"

#40
post #39

Unless your client's problem is "I can't log in", why not just look in your log to see which browser they are on?

It's actually a lot easier, unless you have next-to-zero traffic, to ask _them_ to take an action that puts the info in your inbox, rather than dig in logs, which could have that specific user's information buried amongst hundreds of other entries. It's a time-saver.

What if you have insufficient logging (Heroku sans a decent logging plugin, for instance)? What if you built the thing, but it's hosted by a third-party that limits log access? What if you want some non-technical or not-that-technical person to handle the issue?

As hackers, we tend toward "do-it-yourself", but there are a lot of cases where that isn't practical or economical.

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