RSS FeedSat 13 Dec 2008
After the amazing response you all gave me when I was thinking about permalink structures, I have another question to pose to the community in regards to starting a new site.
As I am considering launching some additional sites, I have a couple of site ideas that have more than one site component (for lack of a better term) and am not sure what the most optimal organization would be. By site component, I am referring to different aspects such as a blog, photo gallery, forums, etc. For this site, it was a non-issue because the only thing I have on here is the blog.
So far, the two different methods that I am aware of are subdomains and subdirectories and therein is my question to my readers. When it comes to building and launching a new site, would it be better to use subdomains (i.e. blog.site.com and photos.site.com) or subdirectories (i.e. www.site.com/blog/ and www.site.com/photos/) for the different components of the site.
This could also be looked at in terms of having multiple blogs or galleries on the same domain. In either case, I would imagine the main page (www.site.com) to be some sort of navigational overview similar to a magazine style theme or something of that nature that would give viewers a snapshot of recent activity from the different areas of the site and allow them to get to whichever part looked interesting to them.
Now, I know WordPress has some sort of built-in photo gallery, but I’m not exactly sure how that works as far as having different “albums” for the different photos and things of that nature but perhaps it is something that I could look into for a photo gallery component being integrated with a WordPress blog. However, I still wonder about adding additional components such as forums or custom CMS-type code and whether those would be better on a subdomain or subdirectory.
Perhaps some hybrid between the two methods would work best or having the blog be at the top level .com/postname and other components be in a subdirectory .com/forum/? Or maybe somehow just try to mix it all together with no discernable difference or obvious organization? I’ll turn it over to you now to give your thoughts and opinions as far as some of the advantages and disadvantages of some of the different methods so that I can better understand my options in this area.
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For different types of content, I would recommend subdirectories rather than subdomains, as it allows you to use relative links more easily, and typically is less complex to set up and maintain. This is particularly true if the different areas (ie, blog / photos / etc) will be sharing some content / css / etc.
However, if you intend to have an area that’ll operate totally independently from the rest of the site (say, a forum, with no shared code / content), then a subdomain may be more appropriate (although it’ll work just as effectively in a subdirectory too).
As far as SEO goes, I’m having good luck with the subdirectories on the same domain. I haven’t tried the subdomains, though.
So far I am using the subdirectory approach with my new project. I think for the time being that it will be fine. But if by some miracle that it takes off, I think I may do the subdomain or just a whole new name and keep it separate.
thanks for writing up this post, as i am currently wondering the same thing.
Subdomains are good if your looking to build a large authority type site and don’t want to clutter you top level domain. For instance, see About.com
They’re also better for multiple blogs. With subdomains it’s still one click install for each….more then one blog in a sub-directory though and now you’re dealing with directory creation and manual uploads after the first one.
I don’t think I’d even want to fathom trying to have multiple blogs in a given subdirectory, but what about multiple blogs in separate subdirectories (.com/blog1/ .com/blog2/ etc)?
I mislead, sorry. You can’t have multiple in one sub-directory.
blog2 3 4 5 is what I was referring to. After .com/blog1 you then have to manually setup blog2 and beyond as well as manual install the blogs for each.
PITA - BIG TIME.
Don’t take this as gospel. Ask around if you wish. I had the same question a while back and that’s exactly what I was told.
Personally speaking, I don’t do “manual” anything lol. I WILL screw something up. If it can’t be done with a few clicks, I either find another way or pay it out.
Many advertisers will pay for one ad on each domain. They don’t pay multiple times to advertise on subdomains. I learned from experience.
I’ve yet to “get” why subdomains are super useful. THe commenter up top gave an ok reason for relative coding but I code everything full url more or less so it wouldn’t make my life any easier.