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Is a subdomain OK as your product's web site?
- makecheck 17y agoWhy not "yourcompany.com/productname/"?
- aerique 17y agoI would do both: product.company.com and (www.)company.com/product/.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- patio11 17y ago[Edit: I was responding to a post which suggested that multiple subdirectories would be optimal if they didn't have to share designs. The post has since been deleted by the author.] I don't know whether that is a technical limitation, a process limitation, or a phantom limitation. If it is a technical limitation, there are ways to fix it. For example: http://www.bingocardcreator.com http://www.bingocardcreator.com http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo/ http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo/ http://www.bingocardcreator.com/blog/ http://www.bingocardcreator.com/blog/ These are three subdirectories which I have reasons for running off of distinct (but similar) designs. Two of them are different controllers in Rails, the third is actually a Wordpress blog (PHP) which is actually served from a machine which is physically distinct from the one running Rails. This is accomplished by a bit of layout abusing trickery in Rails and an Nginx config file which takes anything starting with /blog and proxies it to Apache rather than using the standard serve-it-if-exists-on-disk-otherwise-proxy-to-mongrel Rails pattern. (Reverse proxies are like caching and duct tape: if they don't solve the problem you just aren't using enough of them.) Why are these three all on the same domain? SEO. I want links to A/Bingo or the blog to help build trust for my domain. If they were subdomains, while that would simplify my server configuration a bit, Google would consider them mostly separate entities on the trust graph, such that e.g. a link from ajaxian.com to the A/Bingo code would not help convince Google my bingo card pages were trustworthy.
- ajtaylor 17y agoUpvoted for the reverse proxy quote. :-)
- kvs 17y agoThis might help (if you haven't read it already): http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/ I use subdirectories.
- keltex 17y agoFrom an SEO perspective subdirectories are considered better than subdomains because subdirectories help the ranking of the primary domain better than subdomains. If you want the overall ranking of www.example.com to improve, use www.example.com/producta and www.example.com/product, not producta.example.com and productb.example.com. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/subdomains-subfolders-and-toplevel-domains http://www.seomoz.org/blog/subdomains-subfolders-and-topleve...
- robotrout 17y agoHistorically, it’s been kind of a wash about when to use subdomains vs. subdirectories. - Matt Cutts http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/
- petervandijck 17y agoSubdomains loose you SEO juicyness. So no, better to use diretories (unless you're say Yahoo I suppose).
- mseebach 17y agoSome yays for subdomains: - they allow me to share all administrative code behind the scenes (logging framework, key generator, common scripts, etc.); - they're free for me on my current hosting plan; With all due respect, I'd say this guy has bigger problems than subdomain vs. own domain. I reads a lot like he's on a $5/month plan, and it's a deal-breaker to spend eg. $20 for a slice or linode where all those considerations goes away.
- reedlaw 17y agoWhat's wrong with that? $15 a month might be all it takes to become "ramen profitable".
- mseebach 17y agoWhat's wrong with that is that he's letting very simple technological concerns get in the way of him releasing his product. It's basically an example of very premature optimization.
- reedlaw 17y agoI wouldn't say he's "optimizing" if he chooses to use a cheap host and subdomain. He's boostrapping an agile product. He can always get a better host and full domain name in subsequent iterations.
- mseebach 17y agoYeah, and that's laudable. It just reads like he assumes a constraint and starts worrying rather than understanding the constraint his decision imposes. Also, I'm sure, if he shops around, he can find a cheap shared host that'll host multiple domains for him. This further implies that he's in constraints-mode rather than solutions-mode. The optimization comparison is meant in the sense that it's like he's focusing on whether the compiler correctly unrolls this or that loop, rather than focusing on getting his product out of the door where it can start creating some value for customers.
- billpg 17y agoJust like altavista.digital.com. How did that work out?
- alttab 17y agoI would think if you can't afford the extra $10 registration for a new domain that you yourself probably aren't very confident in your products recouping their domain cost. If such is the case, a company has bigger problems than even the great ones outlined previously.
- jacquesm 17y agoIt works, but I wouldn't do it. For one it makes selling a product line a tough thing to do.
- stuartjmoore 17y agoSubdomains are best for separate "apps" on your server. www.company.com/product1, product2, etc. store.company.com/product support.company.com/product . . .
- coderdude 17y agoWhy would that be?
- chubbard 17y agoI don't know why the web isn't more friendly to sub domains. We keep wasting domain names. Reusing domains and using sub domains is an elegant solution. I hate going to web sites that dump every product they own on one page, along with support, company information ,etc. It just makes it harder to find info for what I want when I have to look at everything. If they had a subdomain they can dedicate what appears as a whole site to just that product. Then their company info, career portion, etc can be on their main domain, and keep it all separated.