Multiple AppEngine Apps on Multiple Domains require Multiple Google Apps accounts?

[Jessi]

Greetings--

I want to start out by saying I've checked the faq, and did a search
on this group and looked at a dozen or so previous postings that
looked like they might cover this. I've also been looking for an
answer to this question for awhile and read various blog posts, etc,
without finding anyone who has addressed the issue directly.

Several years ago I had a project that App Engine seemed ideal for,
and also needed a google Apps account for our business, so we set up
google apps on our main domain: Company.com at the time, we planned
to use app engine for blogs.company.com or whatever. That didn't pan
out. So, we only have one app engine app, that is company.appspot.com
and also company.com.

Now we're working on a technology which will result in three unrelated
websites. For illustration purposes, I'll call them pets.com,
music.com and sailboats.com.

The company.com App Engine account has 9 open slots for apps.
However, I cannot find any way to use slot 2 for pets.appspot.com and
have it show up at www.pets.com. (and slot three for
music.appspot.com and have it be at www.music.com, etc.)

I don't need a naked domain. I just need to host an app on a domain
other than company.com. It would be inappropriate to do
music.company.com or sailboats.company.com.

The only supported way to do this, that I can find, is to open three
more google Apps accounts for pets.com, music.com and sailboats.com,
and then set up three more app engine accounts for them. I'm
guessing since Google puts limits on the number of app engine apps
that opening free google apps accounts would be a terms of use
violation.

I don't mind paying, I don't mine making company.com billing enabled.
I just want to be able to operate the other apps on different
domains.

---

I thought I had a solution, when I noticed that I could register
domain aliases in google apps. So I took one of my spare domains,
created a simple test project in google apps. I registered the domain
as an alias in google apps and uploaded the app engine app and then
went to the administration for the app engine app and entered the
domain. The "Add Domain..." seems to redirect to google apps which
gives me:

"Server error
Sorry, you've reached a login page for a domain that isn't using
Google Apps. Please check the web address and try again"

The help page on this error says you can "only login to google apps on
your primary domain." This implies that this method wont' work.

---

I could, of course, just CNAME www.music.com to music.appspot.com.
I've seen elsewhere that this doesn't work and you need to cname to
ghs.google.com. The core issue, though, is that when the servers on
googles side get the web request for a domain that is aliased to
ghs.google.com they need to have a way to look up which appengine app
is associated with the name that was aliased.

This lookup should not be very difficult, and this is what is
happening when you set up your domain under google apps.

But there seems to be no other way to set up a domain so that
ghs.google.com knows which app engine app to run, and therefore, there
seems to be no way to have app engine apps on multiple domains other
than the one for which you have an apps account.

I don't see the technical problem here.

So, does google really want me to create multiple Goolge Apps
accounts? Since this would involve going out and buying prepaid
cellphones in order to have a unique cell id to get the SMS
"verification" happening .... it all seems shady and like I'm routing
around what google wants me to do.

Or is it Googles intention to say you can do multiple App Engine Apps,
they just can only be on one second level domain?

I understand App Engine is in beta, but we're several years in. I'm
working on a production business for which App Engine is the best
solution. But this issue is one which I would be willing to go
elsewhere over in order to have the right domain name.

I figured that I should ask in case there was a solution, because it
is clear by the fact that I'd have to buy new cellphones that google
doesn't support the only method I can think of to do this and use App
Engine.

Please advise.

Thanks.

[Alon Carmel]

You basically want one single app to serve more then one domain? subdomain or naked one?

-
Cheers,

def AlonCarmel(request)

     import simplejson as json

     contact = {}

     contant['email'] = 'a...@aloncarmel.me'
     contact['twitter'] = '@aloncarmel'
     contact['web'] = 'http://aloncarmel.me' 
     contact['phone'] = '+972-54-4860380'

     return HttpResponse(json.dumps(contact))

* If you received an unsolicited email from by mistake that wasn't of your matter please delete immediately. All E-mail sent from Alon Carmel is copyrighted to Alon Carmel 2008. Any details revealed in e-mails sent by Alon Carmel are owned by the Author only. Any attempt to duplicate or imitate any of the Content is prohibited under copyright law 2008.

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[Nick Johnson (Google)]

Hi Jessi,

When you want to add a domain that is an alias domain to your app, you need to enter the name of the main domain in the App Engine control panel. You'll then be given the opportunity to choose which aliased domain you want to associate it with.

-Nick

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[Jessi]

Nick solved the problem by pointing out that I used the root/original
Apps domain when adding it to the app engine app, rather than the
alias. Thanks Nick!

I believe I could have a single app serve more than one domain,
because the domains are all CNAMED to ghs.google.com and the Google
Apps control panel lets me add aliases and subdomains as much as I
want. I think that I'd just then have the app pay attention to the
request to know which domain the request was sent to, if I needed to
do that.

But I can now use my App Engine app slots and each one run on a
different domain, all from the same App Engine and Apps account. So
this is great news.

Thanks again.

[Ryan Galloway]

Hi Nick,

This works for me, too. But I'm wondering why it doesn't work for "active" domains that are added with the option:

Add another domain
Manage users and groups at an associated domain that you own, independently of the primary domain

e.g. if my Google Apps control panel, I see:

domain.com    Primary domain
foo.com       Active
bar.com       Domain alias for domain.com

I can link bar.com but not foo.com to the GAE app.

[Jeff Schnitzer]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 3:43 AM, Nick Johnson (Google)
<nick.j...@google.com> wrote:
> When you want to add a domain that is an alias domain to your app, you need

Be *very* careful about using domain aliases!

Let's say you create a thriving little business on xyz.com and decide
to sell it. The process of "de-aliasing" xyz.com and putting it on an
independent google apps domain involves approximately one *WEEK* of
downtime.

Seriously, Google Apps is broken. Don't ever use domain aliases for
production GAE apps.

Jeff

[Prashant Gupta]

+1