Add a redirect for the console bare domain

[jianglai]

This allows us to access the console at console.[basedomain] instead of console.[basedomain]/console. Although most users probably will stick with using the /console path in their requests, it could save some time and mental energy having to remember to type /console every time.

This change is 

[jianglai]

Reviewed 2 of 2 files at r1, all commit messages.
Reviewable status: complete! all files reviewed, all discussions resolved (waiting on @ptkach)

[ptkach]

I'm not sure we should go ahead with this. We will have /registrar -> console.basedomain/console and registry.google/console -> console.basedomain/console. That's already enough complexity and redirect around accessing /console webapp. I feel like adding another redirect might be confusing for someone not familiar with backstory.

Reviewed 2 of 2 files at r1, all commit messages.
Reviewable status: complete! all files reviewed, all discussions resolved (waiting on @jianglai)

[jianglai]

I'm not sure we should go ahead with this. We will have /registrar -> console.basedomain/console and registry.google/console -> console.basedomain/console. That's already enough complexity and redirect around accessing /console webapp. I feel like adding another redirect might be confusing for someone not familiar with backstory.

Reviewed 2 of 2 files at r1, all commit messages.
Reviewable status: complete! all files reviewed, all discussions resolved (waiting on @jianglai)

This is purely optional, it only affects people who access console.basedomain directly, where they are redirected to console.basedomain/console. We will not proactively advertise to customers about this. Conceptually I think it makes sense for one to go to console.basedomain and expect things to work.

The customers are still told to go to www.registry.google/console, which will later redirect to console.registry.google/console.

I still think we should at some point stop redirecting www.registry.google/registrar. It is not like this URL is for the public to consume, and therefore need to be supported indefinitely. We have a fixed set of customers who we have told explicitly to use the /console path. After some time it should be OK for us to stop supporting /registrar.

[jianglai]

Ping.

[ptkach]

I still think we should at some point stop redirecting www.registry.google/registrar.

we just yesterday received another email from a partner which mentioned /registrar. It's not a great UX to just disable urls while they are being accessed, so we have to keep it running until we see no hits

This is purely optional

I understand, my concern is implementation complexity around accessing the console. Like imagine a scenario when someone completely unfamiliar with the backstory needs to go and make a change to the final destination. They will need to update it in 3 places - /console , /registrar and /, which to me is seems like a little too much of complexity around accessing a static content. That's why i'd rather keep it to a 2 places that we absolutely necessary need to have - /registrar and /console redirects.

What do you think?

Reviewable status: complete! all files reviewed, all discussions resolved (waiting on @jianglai)

[jianglai]

we just yesterday received another email from a partner which mentioned /registrar. It's not a great UX to just disable urls while they are being accessed, so we have to keep it running until we see no hits

If we keep it running, people will keep using it and we will never see "no hits". Given that we have a limited user base, and that we have communicated the change explicitly to everyone who is affected, it is fair to me that we drop the /registrar redirect at some point. We just need to let support know so they have a canned response to the registrars who didn't read the memo.

I understand, my concern is implementation complexity around accessing the console. Like imagine a scenario when someone completely unfamiliar with the backstory needs to go and make a change to the final destination. They will need to update it in 3 places - /console , /registrar and /, which to me is seems like a little too much of complexity around accessing a static content. That's why i'd rather keep it to a 2 places that we absolutely necessary need to have - /registrar and /console redirects.

Obviously you are more experienced in this area than I am, so I'll ultimately defer to your decision. My intentions are not to have three different paths to support. To me, /console should always be the canonical one that we officially support and refer users to. /registrar is a relic that we keep in place for a while during the transition period and will eventually be retired. / is a nice-to-have to save people some keystrokes and the mental toll to remember the actual path -- think Gmail, the canonical URL is https://mail.google.com/mail/u/[X], but I doubt anyone remembers it. People almost universally just go to gmail.com, which is merely a redirect. https://console.registry.google/ will fulfill a similar task. But make no mistake, we certainly should not say that all three URLs are how one should access the console. https://console.registry.google/console should always be the canonical URL that is ultimately where the content is served from.

[jianglai]

Ping. What are your thoughts? If you are against it, I'll close the PR.

[ptkach]

I feel like until we can reduce the complexity around accessing the console we should postpone this change.
I checked and we're still getting on average 10+ hits to the /registrar a day from numerous partners and that unfortunately won't allow us to simply turn it off. We might gonna have to communicate it again to the partners, then hopefully remove /registrar support and then we can add this change.
What to you say? Does it make sense?

Reviewable status: complete! all files reviewed, all discussions resolved (waiting on @jianglai)

[jianglai]

Sure, we can revisit this later.