FQDN vs. Subdomain vs. Subdirectory for housing projects?

Discussions
#1

Hi,

How do you demarcate your various projects online? Do you use a separate domain, subdomains or sub directories? e.g.

  1. AwesomeProject.com
  2. AwesomeProject.MyNameOrBusiness.com
  3. MyNameOrBusiness.com/AwesomeProject

Do you have opinions or even better quantitative proof that one approach is better than another?

According to this thread there might be some marginal benefit to separate or a subdomain.

I’m torn between 1 & 3. 1 feels like it might be neater, keeping things separate but 3 feels a lot more maintainable. SEO is obviously a large factor but if there’s not much in it then storing everything in one place will be a lot easier.

Anyone regretting having many separate ebook, webinar, blog & SaaS websites?

Thanks

db

#2

For SEO and “it’s clearer to customers” reasons, I use #1 (all products on separate domains). What kinds of “projects” are you asking about, though? I’d think contributed modules & libraries, open source tools, and that sort of thing should be fine as subpages of your main site. If people are spending $$ to buy something, and you’re trying to build a brand & marketing copy for a product, you’ll likely find that easier if it has it’s own domain.

1 Like
#3

I think it also depends on how closely related your products are to each other. If they’re all for the same target market, building a brand around your business name (including keeping them all on one site) could have some value for helping you cross-sell. I haven’t tried this myself, so maybe someone else who has can say whether that approach is worth it?