What Do You Prefer? A Subdomain Or A Url With A Folder Name?

[shadowx 0]

Hi everyone, please see the poll and respond!Let me elaborate here, say if there was a website, the url itself was around 6 or 7 letters long such as Xisto.com, that sort of length, now would you prefer to see a subdomain on this site, such as sub.site.com or have a folder name in the URL like site.com/sub, I want the URL to be as easy to remember and as catchy as possible and im not sure which method would give the best results here. In line with my last post i would appreciate any links to a website where i can find information like this. But please respond to my poll so i can get an idea of what the average user thinks. Thanks!

[Tetraca 0]

If I have a true domain, I prefer to use sub.site.com because it looks cleaner.If I have a subdomain only, I prefer to use site.com/folder because it makes the URL looks less rediculous.

[shadowx 0]

Yeh i would agree with that, a sub.sub.com URL is long to remember, to clarify it would be a top level domain like https://www.salesforce.com/products/platform/overview/ for the quick response, i forgot to clarify that it was about a TLD.

[cwconline 0]

Most Def a sub domain... but a folder domain is good to..Why subdomain? It can be shorter instead of something like site.com/members/cwconline/index.php or however it isBut also note a good url like geocities, or tripod will up and boost your search engine rank if it is in a folder. Becausethey already have there pages with there page rank, and there domain, is what is being looked at next to your folder where yoursite is.

[reconraiders 0]

It really depends on your situation. Sometimes folders work better. Sometimes sub-domains work better. If you mean for organization within one particular site, folders are usually better. This way you can make it easier to reference included files like stylesheets, javascripts, images, and other files. However, in my opinion, if your purpose is for a whole site (like your own site on a free host) I would use subdomains. This way you can use a forward slash ('/') and go to the root of the site. Because if your freesite url was like "hostsite.com/yoursite", you would have to use "/yoursite" to get to your root.

[Saint_Michael 3]

Hmmm I would say thats a tough call and like recon mention it would depend on the situation and what your site is all about. Both set ups could be used for good organization you just have to use them appropriately, for instance if your site is all about news then this site up would be appropriate for archiving that news: yoursite.com/folder1/folder2/folder3/folder4.Now if you have a business that has divisions within that company then this set up would be more appropriate:cia.whitehouse.gov fbi.whitehouse.govYou can be organized in any matter of ways to have a good looking site, it just depends what kind of site your trying to set up for people to see.

[jlhaslip 4]

This isn't my area of expertise, but I think when you create a sub-domain on your account in Cpanel, there is a folder created for the sub-domain and the sub-domain can be accessed using either

sub.domain.com/ or

domain.com/sub.

 

But I might be wrong.

[wenster 0]

I prefer to have WENISCOOLASIAN.com/subdomainTo me it just looks better than blahblahblah.weniscoolasian.com seems long.

[khalilo 0]

I prefer my own domain instead of a subdomain cuz http://www.mydomain.com/ looks cooler and easier to memorise than http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/. It also makes the sight look better. A subdomain may imply that the owner of the sight doesn't care much about it cuz he isn't spending a lot of money on it. While a domain signifies that the owner is spending money and therefore caring about it. In other words a domain is more attractive for traffic, so i have to go with domain instead of subdomain.

[ghostrider 0]

Domain names are obviously the best that you can have, as long as they aren't to long to remember.I voted for subdomain, but you should only use it if you if thats short, otherwise the address gets to long to remember. You can always use a folder too, and change it later.

[jonathon 0]

Domain names are obviously the best that you can have, as long as they aren't to long to remember.
I voted for subdomain, but you should only use it if you if thats short, otherwise the address gets to long to remember. You can always use a folder too, and change it later.

Unless you run a site the size of yahoo it's best to stick with folders, unless your SEO's subdomains.
Edited June 28, 2007 by jonathon (see edit history)

[Yuripro84 0]

Isn't a folder better SEO and PR wise?A subdomain looks much cleaner, but I read that if there are two sites, site.com and sub.site.com, they are classified as two different sites, while site.com and site.com/folder is classified as just one site.But, if you want to really look more professional, then i would go subdomain.

[shadowx 0]

Well if a subdomain damages my SEO and page rank etcetera then surely by using the subdomain to redirect to a folder then i could use SEO on the folder and the subdomain would make it look nice to the user?Would this affect my standing in a search engine?

[Yuripro84 0]

I think as long as the content is in the folder, it's all good, but I'm no SEO expert lolGood question though....I would have never though of doing that

[Unregistered 012 0]

Personally, i like sub.trap17.com more than Xisto.com/sub. I think that sub.trap17.com looks more neat, and professional. While Xisto.com/sub just looks, well..... , not as good in my opinion. I'm glad that Xisto.com uses sub.trap17.com instead of Xisto.com/sub. But that is just my opinion.