This isn't revolutionary, but is an alternative to the somewhat hacky method of adding a CNAME for your.domain.tld to yourcompany.basecampurl.com. It's also not total branding, but will not break if you have a package with SSL, and even gives you the option of using your own certificate.
The trick is using Apache's ProxyPass directive, part of the mod_proxy module. ProxyPass isn't a complete proxy, but instead allows you to proxy remote content into select parts of your site. Do you have customers.yoursite.com hosted at a different location than www.yoursite.com, and want to be able to access it from www.yoursite.com/customers? ProxyPass is the tool for you.
This isn't a perfect solution for BaseCamp because the generated emails will still have the yourcompany.basecampurl.com links in them, but it's something that 37signals could add as a setting. I'm sure they won't, but they could.
Depending on which BaseCamp package you're using, you'll need to use a slightly different configuration. The packages all seem to use SSL for the login, but only the more expensive packages use it sitewide.
SSL BaseCamp Package, No SSL on yourdomain.tld
<VirtualHost 1.2.3.4:80> ServerAdmin webmaster@support.yourdomain.tld ServerName support.yourdomain.tld ServerAlias www.support.yourdomain.tld SSLProxyEngine On ProxyPass / https://yourcompany.basecampurl.com/ ProxyPassReverse / https://yourcompany.basecampurl.com/ </VirtualHost>
No SSL at BaseCamp or on yourdomain.tld
<VirtualHost 1.2.3.4:80> ServerAdmin webmaster@support.yourdomain.tld ServerName support.yourdomain.tld ServerAlias www.support.yourdomain.tld SSLProxyEngine On # even if your account doesn't include SSL it uses SSL to login ProxyPass /login https://yourcompany.basecampurl.com/login ProxyPassReverse /login https://yourcompany.basecampurl.com/login ProxyPass / http://yourcompany.basecampurl.com/ ProxyPassReverse / http://yourcompany.basecampurl.com/ </VirtualHost>
SSL at BaseCamp, SSL on yourdomain.tld
<VirtualHost 1.2.3.4:80> ServerAdmin webmaster@support.yourdomain.tld ServerName support.yourdomain.tld ServerAlias www.support.yourdomain.tld SSLProxyEngine On ProxyPass / http://yourcompany.basecampurl.com/ ProxyPassReverse / http://yourcompany.basecampurl.com/ </VirtualHost>
It's still not perfect, and the inability to host BaseCamp yourself and subsequent headaches like this are one reason I'm looking at more flexible solutions. Alex has several options available, and there's also FogBugz, activeCollab and Trac.
December 5th, 2007 at 3:43 am
I prefer Wrike http://www.wrike.com/ to Basecamp. It's more flexible. Working with Basecamp turns to a nightmare when you try to work with several projects at a time. You get different project IDs, this is just terrible. You can't split or merge your projects. It's also kind of hard to track tasks, as they don't have due dates. Wrike's completely different. You can customize your plans any second and orginise them in several different ways. And Wrike's integrated with your inbox, so say goodbye to forgotten emails.
December 5th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
I'll have to play with Wrike, I've never actually seen it during my surprisingly regular time-to-replace-basecamp quests. BaseCamp's lack of email integration is one of the biggest issues that has me looking elsewhere.