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Paul Elliott
09-09-2008, 05:57 PM
Calling all website wonks!

I have a friend who owns a large business that involves MLM. He has a master site that is the front end for his distributors to use for their businesses.

He is talking with a new company doing his programming and has a fundamental question to which he isn't sure he is getting good advice.

In redesigning the site for use as a template/front end for his distributors, what are the pros and cons of the following choices?

www.distributor.company.com (http://www.distributor.company.com) vs. www.company.com/distributor (http://www.company.com/distributor).

He's even been told that it can be done both ways. He's not sure what the benefit is of that approach would be.

When he asks too many questions, he gets the "we'll handle all the problems" from the geeks. I explained that that approach from a vendor is inexcusable.

Any help is gratefully appreciated.

Paul

billbenson
09-09-2008, 06:38 PM
Here's an interesting forum post on the topic. I'll be interested what others say on this one.

Subdomains vs. Subdirectories (http://holbreich.de/2008/01/subdomains-vs-subdirectories/)

cbscreative
09-09-2008, 06:46 PM
On the back end, they are usually the same, but from a user perspective I think it's better to have the subdomain, e.g. distributor.company.com. I don't have any hard data to reference, but I think average users are more comfortable typing with dots than slashes.

pete
09-09-2008, 07:04 PM
I sell some subdomains to others. I own the domain highly-recommends.com, as well as several similar. Good for affiliates and others promoting a product.

whoever.highly-recommends.com
.

vangogh
09-10-2008, 02:40 AM
This used to be more important than it is now. Once upon a time Google would see a subdomain as a completely different domain so in using subdomains you were essentially having to promote two different sites from the perspective of SEO.

Google now treats them the same which is why the issue has become less important. I'm not sure how the other engines treat them though.

I prefer directories for most things. I think they're easier for most people to understand. However if the content differs in substance from the rest of the content on the site I think a subdomain makes sense. In that case your content could easily end up on another domain so the subdomain seems the more natural fit.

If I'm understanding your particular example I think subdomains make sense. Is the idea that your friend owns domain.com and then would be offering each of his distributors a section on that domain? Each distributor would be different enough that they could be on different domains and so the subdomain approach makes more sense to me.

Pros and cons aren't really all that different anymore. The issue has become more or a personal preference than anything else. In the past the pros of subdomains were, since they were seen as different domains, links from the sub to the main domain were seen as external links and probably carried more wieght than internal links on the same domain. The cons were you had two sites to promote instead of one.

It's possible the same pros and cons still exist, but I think they've been minimized and will continue to be even more minimized.

orion_joel
09-11-2008, 12:51 AM
You are seeing it almost there Vangogh, how i believe most MLM work is that they offer a url which includes the distributors name or chosen code. In reality it is their affiliate link for the MLM business. The main reason they do it this way i think is that the content is same on every users account only difference is the name of the distributor and their code if someone clicks to sign up.

I think it is primarily done this way so as to control the content on the page. Also most MLM business are often quite strict in how they can promote the business and how much they can and cannot say in an ad, which often means the website domain the MLM business offer this with is not there domain but a short masking domain that allows them to let there distributors advertise the link.

To the actual question though, whenever i have set up sub domain's in cpanel the sub directory works as well. so i would assume that this is an automatic thing when the sub domain is created the directory is automatic (although not always in reverse)

billbenson
09-11-2008, 02:35 PM
Since you mention MLM, the pitch that a lot of them make is they give you your own website. In reality its a subdomain on their site. Most people don't know the difference and think they have their own web site. They collect all of the contacts and optins you generate, and resell them or otherwise use them if you drop out of the MLM.

Paul Elliott
09-11-2008, 10:10 PM
Thanks to all for all the insight. Please keep it coming.

Paul