What is a Subdomain?
By Mitch Keeler
When you have yourself a pie, chances are you are not
going to want to eat the whole thing yourself. Instead you will divide
the pie into several pieces so that it is easier to manage and everybody
can get some. Think of a Web hosting account in the same way. You might
want to have a section of it devoted to your blog. You might want another
section of it to be devoted to your favorite links. With or without
subdomains this can be done. However, with subdomains the process is
so much easier to navigate.
Now I will save you the horrible trouble of what goes on during the
Web hosting server side of this. Trust me, it is nothing exciting and
probably nothing you need to worry about just yet. Most of you should
know by now that when you create a new folder inside your Web hosting
account, the directory for it should look something like this:
Without Subdomain:
http://www.yoursite.com/blog
Now that is all fine and dandy, but it might be a little hard to remember.
Now what if you got a different address that pointed at that same exact
spot, but was easier to remember? Try this on for size:
With Subdomain:
http://blog.yoursite.com
Did you see what happened? We dropped the "www" and put in
"blog". Now that this is up there, you can drop the use of
"/blog" at the end. This my friends is a subdomain.
How can you create one of these beauties on your own? Well, your Web
hosting company should have provided you with a control panel when signing
up for your Web hosting account. If they did, you should have a setting
somewhere in there telling you how you can get it done. It differs from
control panel to control panel, so I will leave that much as homework
for you.
In effect you are telling the server that "http://blog.yoursite.com"
points to your "blog" folder. This can be done with any folder
that is inside your root or home directory. Now how would a folder look
if it was inside the blog folder? Like this:
Without Subdomain:
http://www.yoursite.com/blog/mitchrules
With Subdomain:
http://blog.yoursite.com/mitchrules
Now why would you want to use subdomains? For easier navigation and
organization. The shorter you are able to make a URL, the more likely
a visitor is going to remember it and come back.
About the author:
Mitch Keeler is a guy who likes
to help people out in his own charismatic and odd way. Instead of showing
somebody how to do something, he much more enjoys having people see
the problem and the solution through his own eyes. Mitch has worked
as an article and content writer for various Web sites around the globe,
including Lockergnome. Please feel free to contact Mitch, look over
his impressive resume of accomplishments or read more helpful articles at his blog, mitchelaneous.
