Wp-calypso: Validate for domains like httpwwwyourgroovydomain.com

[donalirl]

To prevent accidental domain registrations like:

• httpwwwyourgroovydomain.com
• httpswwwyourgroovydomain.com
• wwwyourgroovydomain.com

can we add a validation check to prevent/provide a warning for domain registrations where http, https, and www are included in the domain name itself?

Screenshot / Video

Context / Source

Seen in support #7137059-hc

[thehenrybyrd]

This would be great! I've seen a number of these recently - I'll keep an eye open to add reports to this.

[thehenrybyrd]

Ran into this again today, with "4httpwww" before the desired domain. #1614063-zen

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been marked as stale and will be closed in seven days. This happened because:

• It has been inactive in the past 9 months.
• It isn't a project or a milestone, and hasn’t been labeled `[Pri] Blocker`, `[Pri] High`, `[Status] Keep Open`, or `OSS Citizen`.

You can keep the issue open by adding a comment. If you do, please provide additional context and explain why you’d like it to remain open. You can also close the issue yourself — if you do, please add a brief explanation.

[donalirl]

I believe this is still important and hopefully easy to implement, so keeping it open unless anyone feels strongly against.

[thehenrybyrd]

Agreed. This has slipped off my radar, but I'll try to keep an eye out again as I see this fairly frequently.

[SiobhyB]

Another +1! I see this from time to time and will make more of an effort to add examples here.

[lancewillett]

@wensco @kelliepeterson Have you seen similar reports to this one? Curious if you think it is worth addressing in the Calypso domain registration UI.

Steps to repeat:

1. On an existing site, go to Plans > Domains
2. Click "Add Domain"
3. Type httpwwwyourgroovydomain.com into the search

Improvement would be to look for common mistakes like http or www in the domain name.

[kelliepeterson]

@lancewillett thanks for surfacing this. This is the first time I've seen this report - and note that it goes back some time.

Looking at our userbase portfolio of domain names I see that we have 14 domains across www/http for April and about 330 domains across both www and http overall that have registration dates going back to 2016 - and that includes users who have paid for renewals of these domains/plans! I'm also seeing that this isn't just a domain name issue, it's happening at the wp.com subdomain level.

I wouldn't want to block this outright as there are legitimate users for both, but I'm sure we can put a warning notice/modal in place.

It's now on our radar, but it doesn't feel like a huge priority based on these numbers. Let me know if you feel otherwise though.

[lancewillett]

Thanks for the context, @kelliepeterson. I am going to close as "won't fix" for now. We can continue to gather numbers on this in the future, to see if it happens enough to add warnings in the UI.