This is a follow up to my question from yesterday Azure Storage blob using custom domain is not resolving while subdomain worked - how to set up host records?
The objective is to have blob storage files be reachable and ranked on google via our custom domain for example: http://contoso.com/docs/product1-specs.pdf.
This is a new website and so there's no concern with needed redirects from old links.
so in an html file on "contoso.com/product1" you'd have an internal link for example
<a href="/docs/product1-specs.pdf">product 1 specs</a>
where "contoso.com" is our custom domain hosted by Azure App Service where "contoso1.blob.core.windows.net" is the Azure Storage Account "contoso1" where "/docs/product1-specs.pdf" represents the blob file "product1-specs.pdf" in the container "docs" stored in Azure Storage.
This is a four part question:
Question part 1: what is the SEO friendly and proper technical approach to achieve this internal link and retrieve the blob from Azure storage ? Of course the external link contoso.com/docs/product1-specs.pdf fetched as an external resource also needs to be a valid retrievable url.
Is it: a)setting the custom domain for the storage account to a subdomain assets.contoso.com and then doing an url rewrite/redirect to contoso.com/docs/* b) setting the custom domain for the storage account to contoso.com and then doing an url rewrite/redirect to contoso.com/docs/* c) something different
I prefer not to have to host and manage ranking for a separate site with assets.contoso.com - I'd like to have the blobs organized in the "docs" container that online shows up as if it were a folder called "docs".
Question part 2: I create a test Azure storage account called "iprobesolutions" and set the custom domain to iprobesolutions.com per this screenshot:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/45u6iczcnusuxvl/Screenshot%202016-05-31%2010.31.40.png?dl=0
Is it right to do the following steps in this order: 1) in the Azure storage account set up iprobesolutions.com as the custom domain iprobesolutions.com 2) set dns records for iprobesolutions.com as follows per screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xqw2d9k3gj6mnjs/Screenshot%202016-05-30%2021.30.22.png?dl=0 and DNS configuration to point iprobesolutions.com to iprobesolutions.blob.core.windows.net 3) finally set up URL rewrite configuration
Or do I ONLY need URL rewrite configuration without having to set up a custom domain in Azure Storage ?
Question part 3:
For the URL configuration part, whether done as step 3 or as a single step, looking at this question How to map Azure Blob with container with a custom domain sub-directory? and another source which of below two would be the correct web.config redirect for IIS 8.5 and what is the difference between the two ? As mentioned, there is no concern for maintaining old links as it's a new website .I'm not clear whether for our specific use case we need a redirect or just a rewrite ?
The goal is to have iprobesolutions.com/docs/product1-specs.pdf be the canonical name (and NOT the Azure blob name),
<rule name="redirect-docs" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="docs/(.*)"/>
<action type="Redirect" url="https://iprobesolutions1.blob.core.windows.net/docs/{R:1}"></action>
</rule>
<rule name="docs redirection" stopProcessing="false">
<match url="docs/(.*)" ignoreCase="true" />
<action type="Redirect" url="https://iprobesolutions.com/docs/{R:1}" redirectType="Permanent" appendQueryString="true" logRewrittenUrl="true" />
</rule>
Question part 4: since iprobesolutions1.blob.core.windows.net is forced as a HTTPS connection, is converting it into an HTTP connection via our HTTP website w going to lead to some browsers giving a false positive of a security alarm and if so, what is the solution to avoiding these false positives without suddenly being constrained to purchase a TSL certificate to force an HTTPS connections to iprobesolutions.com since it's set up as a static marketing website.
Thanks for taking the time to read and I hope someone could chime in from their experience facing similar scenarios to mine!
