Subdomain Question?

[Robbie626]

What is more user-friendly? I am using Wordpress as my main domain, but I am going to use a forum as "community"

My plan: my forum site will be community.domain.com

Would it be better to have it as domain.com/community?

 

[Joshua Farrell]

It depends on if you want to work on making the two look and feel part of each other, or if you just want the community separate from the blog.

If the goal is to make the two look and feel a part of each other, then I would recommend it on the /community/ slug, with the designs similar enough to be able to feel like you aren't on a completely different site. Of course this way, you would need to have designs pretty close to each other (colors and headers being the same), with the navigation allowing access to both the blog and forum from the same area.

 

[/foogle]

Any subdomain provided above would work.

community.domain.com or domain.com/community

 

[Robbie626]

It depends on if you want to work on making the two look and feel part of each other, or if you just want the community separate from the blog.

If the goal is to make the two look and feel a part of each other, then I would recommend it on the /community/ slug, with the designs similar enough to be able to feel like you aren't on a completely different site. Of course this way, you would need to have designs pretty close to each other (colors and headers being the same), with the navigation allowing access to both the blog and forum from the same area.

I might consider that once I can design my blog site and MyBB forum to have matching headers to change to /community. You have really great considerations. What is your personal user preference of owners having a forum as a subdomain?

Any subdomain provided above would work.

community.domain.com or domain.com/community

I know both work, but I am seeking user preferences and suggestion for either option of a subdomain.

 

[Ghost]

Personally I think that /community is better because it forces users to start typing in your domain name to visit it in a browser. Otherwise they would just type in "comm..." and probably click the automatic suggestions from their browser, which lowers the chance they remember your domain name. I also think that using a subfolder for the forum clearly ties the community to your main site and might be better for SEO. Using a subdomain is like having a secondary domain, so it's not as closely connected with your domain name as a subfolder. For SEO, you might benefit more from the /community folder 🙂