I've been working on a web platform project for a client, and we are nearing completion. Basically, the platform is a small social network for a specific group of people.
Part of the specification is to allow Vanity URLs for example (example.io/JoeBloggs
), that would redirect to the user profile. This in its self is easy to do via .htaccess, my issue comes because the client has built a "marketing page" at wix which is at the base domain of example.io
, and the platform is at app.example.io
. (They wanted to use wix for the marketing page so they can edit it freely and easily)
The marketing page has login/signup links that simply take you to app.example.io/login
etc.
This means that my vanity URLs are app.example.io/JoeBloggs
, and they want the app.
removed from the URL. After researching, the only way I can think of achieving the URLs that they want would be to move the marking page to a subdomain for example info.example.io
and the platform to the base domain example.io
.
Then in .htaccess check if they access they base domain alone (example.io
) or if they accessed a page (example.io/login
or example.io/JoeBloggs
), if they access the base domain redirect them to info.example.io
, otherwise let them access the page as normal.
Obviously, I don't want to hurt the SEO of the site, as they already have a presence from an old version that was a hardcoded html marketing page at index.html.
Is this the best way to achieve this or did I miss something that is going to be a problem?
info
subdomain might still be discoverable (and indexable), unless you can configure something at the Wix end to prevent this? – MrWhite Apr 2 '18 at 23:12