

Ask YC: Online demo url - wonjun

We just read that YC prefers an obscure demo url that is not password protected, and
we have the following options.<p>
<a href="http://56.34.433.32" rel="nofollow">http://56.34.433.32</a><p>- url to our development server<p>- This is safe without a password protection, but it is less reliable and I have to keep my computer on until YC reviews our demo.<p><a href="http://www.demo.com/obscure" rel="nofollow">http://www.demo.com/obscure</a>, or <a href="http://www.obscure.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.obscure.com</a><p>
- url to our production server<p>- Although direct hits aren't likely, without a password protection, we are concerned that they will become accessible from search engines.<p>How did you guys handle this problem, and what would be the most appropriate form of the obscure demo url?<p>Thank you very much, and good luck to you all!

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gscott
> we are concerned that they will become accessible from search engines.

Add a robots.txt so the site doesn't get indexed.

User-agent: * Disallow: /

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wonjun
Thanks a lot, that's a great solution!

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tipjoy
You could also use a non-standard port. We are.

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wonjun
That's another great solution. Thanks a lot!

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nextmoveone
Wonjun..that's a very unique name...I know a kid named Wonjun in real life. I
never thought I'd see a second.

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wonjun
That's about the 6th or 7th Wonjun I've encountered in my life.

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jackdied
First, your post would have been comedy gold if those had been real demo URLs.

Second, consider making the demo launch a POST from the landing URL. That
should stop the crawlers you won't have in the first place.

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wonjun
yeah, that would've been a disaster. Thanks a lot for your suggestion.

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mwerty
An obscure query string.

