Subdomains are the part of a domain that comes before the main domain name and domain extension. They are created to organize and navigate to different sections of the website.
Do you use subdomains for your personal domain like awesomeproject.mydomain.com?
If so, could you elaborate on your reasons why do you prefer them over subdirectories like mydomain.com/awesomeproject or buying a dedicated domain like awesomeproject.com?
Top comments (15)
For docs in a first place, always docs.mydomain.com
Just think it's easy and quite common.
A couple of months ago I also split our ecosystem with a dedicated website and an app (prefixed app........) instead of a "monolyth".
Doing so I can have a slick and easy prerendered website and a PWA without SSR or pre-rendered complexity.
interesting.
the docs subdomain is for API docs?
I mostly do frontend work so a general docs or dedicated to the components but, yes I would say documenting the API would be a good fit, I guess. What do you think?
For example that's the docs of one of my side project.
I'm in process of writing documentation for a frontend project and it is hosted on a virtual directory now, but will change it soon to a subdomain. thanks for your tip.
For backend projects, I don't think using docs as a subdomain for API IMO is a good idea because of versioning, you'll end up having different levels of subdomains like docs.v1.example.com.
Of course, it depends on how the project is structured.
Usually, I use subdomains for self-hosted projects and to create dedicated environments like dev.example.com
testing.example.com
For api versioning you make a good point, I am agree with you.
It probably depends how it should be handled. It it has to appear in the URL, with sub-subdomain that ain't readable, fully agree, but, if the version is for example a state of the docs (like for example on date-fns) then I guess "docs" can still be use. Depends of the documentation UX I guess then.
dev.example / testing.example I do that too.
Thanks for your feedback!
Yes indeed, specially the img.domain.com 👍
Make me think, cdn.domain.com can also be a good one.
There is one reason I prefer sub domains: you don’t need special configuration for routing.
You serve from root path and the subdomain is the job of the front-end webserver. Internal routing starts from /, no messing with prefixes.
Thanks for the insight 👍😉
Yes. I use the subdomains to let some services be Docker container and map them to specific subdomains.
I don't have a personal domain but...
Subdomain approach is good for differentiating between projects. So for example if I created a library then it would be on
mylibrary.mydomain.com, then if I created a fullstack application website, it would just be onmyapp.mydomain.com.One thing to note tho is keep your main domain short, otherwise it's not gonna be good. For example if the name of the app is
BLThunderstormand my domain isnefomemes.io, it's gonna beblthunderstorm.nefomemes.io, kinda sucks tbh andblth.nefomemes.iowould kinda make it less memorable. It's better to have the domain short likenefo.io, so it would just beblthunderstorm.nefo.io, or if you really want toblth.nefo.io.you can point subdomains to completely different infrastructure, I have subdomains running on netlify, vercel and a paid hosting service
Yes, yes I do.
An example is the.littlest.website which, to be fair, I don't really make the most of.
Other times I split by purpose, like I've had different blogs on ux.moopet.net or blog.moopet.net which have been hosted on different services. I could host a proxy for them on the main domain, but that just seems like doubling my bandwidth for no good reason.
I think the subdomain approach is the best for new side projects. If you see traction, we can then buy a new domain 😎
yes, they are very useful for splitting up servers or type of stack being used.