DNS Redirect Request for hk.drupal.org [#1031434]

Hi fork,

Hi everyone I am Edison Wong from Hong Kong. Our Hong Kong Drupal User Group is now discussing if we should start up with our own homepage, similar as that of http://drupaltaiwan.org/ and http://drupalchina.org/.

Is it possible to request for a DNS redirect for regional user group homepage, e.g. hk.drupal.org? It should be a good idea similar as that of Debian: http://www.debian.org/mirrors/list. From marketing point of views end-user will not confuse with numbers of different Drupal user group homepage URL style, where Drupal.org webmasters will also able to review/approve/block individual user group homepage request and therefore ensure their standard and quality.

On the other hand, this may also simplify the DNS registration procedure and overhead for setting up a regional user group homepage. E.g. in case of Hong Kong, we need to setup a "registered or approved not-for-profit organizations in HKSARG" in order to apply for drupal.org.hk, where drupal.hk was already be preserved by reseller until 2013...

BTW, this may also increase the loading of drupal.org DNS server. In case drupal.org support with this DNS redirect service, may we wildcard DNS record *.hk.drupal.org to target IP and so let regional user group handle the loading with its own server?

Regards,
Edison Wong
PantaRei Design Limited

Comments

Comment #1

gerhard killesreiter commented 18 January 2011 at 16:27

I don't think we will be able to do this.

1) we've not done so before, for any other organisation

2) the domain drupal.org is personal property of Dries, he would need to decide this.

Comment #2

gábor hojtsy

he/him

Hungarian

Hungary

commented 18 January 2011 at 16:27

There are a few reasons this was not done before:

1. Security. Cookies set for different sites would be shared among these websites. Currently *.drupal.org uses a single-sign-on system for example which shares information in cookies with subsites.

2. User expectations. The *.drupal.org website family is supposed to show a unified look (except the drupalcon websites), and it currently does that with groups.drupal.org in the process of being migrated to the new design. Also, *.drupal.org users expect to be logged in regardless of the subsite they are on. This would/should not work with local community sites.

3. Quality assurance. The *.drupal.org sites are centrally managed and we try to ensure all security fixes are deployed and we keep the infrastructure in check. Aliasing in services maintained elsewhere can be problematic for this reason. Also, similarly, we would need to act as some kind of judging board in terms of "official communities" (of which judging process we already have enough I think on groups.drupal.org and on localize.drupal.org). There is nothing stopping people from setting up multiple regional communities, and no blessing from drupal.org is required.