Sub-Domains

[Necromis]

I was thinking about this earlier today, and found it intersting that more places don't use sub-domains. After all they are free, and don't cost you anything more to register them. They give people/companies the ability to create unique addresses for every aspect of their service/products...etc.

Now onto the discussion point of this post. Do you use Sub-domains? If you do, in what ways do you use them? Do you feel you are getting increased traffic to your site by using sub-domains? Lastly what are your opinions of them, and best ways to use them?

[LP-SolidRaven]

Setting up a site using subdomains requires more work and if possible a developer that knows what he's doing else a lot of time will be wasted on getting it to work correctly. And as such costs more, and as such in the crappy capitalist world you end up with no subdomain usage...
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Dilly dally, shilly shally.

[Necromis]

SR - That can indeed be true. However, isn't the beauty behind sub-domains their simplicity? After all you can simply treat them as seperate websites, linked by a common thread. Have you ever personally utilized them? What was your expierence? Do you feel that they benefited you, or hendered you?

[krt]

Developers sometimes get caught up in issues such as cookie handling, maintaining cache mechanisms, redirections, authentication issues and more thus they far too often only get used when it makes their life easier, such as setting up 3rd party scripts that effectively act as a separate site, such as a message board or a blog.

There is also the end user perspective to take into consideration. "Conventional" paths as opposed to subdomains or a mix are more familiar to the average user.

I use subdomains or perhaps a separate domain to separate "modules" of a site for representation of structure and also use them for technical reasons such as separating public facing assets in subdomain(s) to circumvent thread limitations in user agents (browsers generally download a maximum number of files concurrently from one host, typically set between 1 and 4 and can vary among content types, and subdomains count as separate hosts for this purpose).
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[LP-SolidRaven]

Well, I've used subdomains to really point to different physical servers and then try to get them to work together and hand over the sessions between them. I got it to work but it took quite some extra time. More than most companies and developers would be willing to spend.
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Dilly dally, shilly shally.

[Necromis]

In my situation I am planning on using the subdomain for mobile browsers. I might also make it for group specific sites. The website is for a truck brokering service, so we will have shippers, carriers, and consignees. So by building sites specific to their needs and pointing them to sub-domains I can have details available specific to their needs. Plus I won't have to have cross domain cookie management either in that case.

I just am curious about what others think about them. (That and trying to get some good discussions going again on the boards.)

[ClickFanatic]

I use sub-domains for projects which are not part of my main site, but for which I do not want to register a domain name. I think it is nicer to use a sub-domain in such a way, because it clearly shows the site is a "child project" of the main site (or more generally speaking: another application).

That sub-domains are not economical sounds a bit strange to me. Why trust a developer to build your site if he can't even manage different domains?
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If you can read this, my post is on an alternating background.

[LP-SolidRaven]

ClickFanatic, most websites aren't designed in house. You hire somebody to do it as cheap and fast as possible. Dirty links are faster. And if the client doesn't demand it why would you spend time on making the url look nicer knowing it takes more work and won't get you paid better.
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Dilly dally, shilly shally.

[Necromis]

But SolidRaven, don't must business sites that are designed by an outside source get hosted and maintained by that outside source for a fee? Wouldn't you want the customer to be happy with how the site functions so you would do a marginally descent job to keep their contract and not have them shop elsewhere?

[LP-SolidRaven]

And you assume your costumer is smart? We're talking about managers that think Internet Explorer really is "THE INTERNET". They also like to think that anything can be written in visual basic and java. Cause VB and Java programmers are cheaper.
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Dilly dally, shilly shally.

[Necromis]

Well I believe that more companies are becoming more intelligent about the internet and their presence in it. After all it has become a large part of the marketing and commerce of business.

[ClickFanatic]

[LP-SolidRaven]

The majority will never need a subdomain.
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Dilly dally, shilly shally.

[Necromis]

National companies would, or national organizations. That way they can have seperate sites for each branch division. www.denver.mycompany.com

[LP-SolidRaven]

That'd make maintenance a lot "harder" in most cases... Managers don't believe in clean urls, they believe time is money.
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Dilly dally, shilly shally.