Subtext allows you to decide how your blog's URL will look. A good document describing this is found here.
Your Options
Let me give some examples and then I will make a recommendation. You can use a URL like any of these for your blog:
- http://www.YOURDOMAINNAME.com -- let your blog be the default web application.
- http://www.YOURDOMAINNAME.com/blog -- use a path element to specify your blog.
- http://blog.YOURDOMAINNAME.com -- use a subdomain name.
Multiple Blogs
In my opinion, Subtext is by far the best personal blog publishing platform you could use if you want to host multiple blogs. Why might you want to host multiple blogs? Simple: most people have more than one interest. In most cases, it helps you attract readers if you keep your blog focused. Therefore, it becomes natural to expand into multiple blogs.
Another great thing about Subtext is that you can start with one blog and expand to multiple blogs on the same installation. You do not need to reinstall the software or add any extra modules or anything.
However, it does help if you plan ahead by simply not using the URL architecture in option #1 (http://www.YOURDOMAINNAME.com) I mentioned above. Either of the others (and more) will work fine.
If you want to host multiple blogs in a single Subtext installation, this is easily accomplished with both the 2nd and 3rd options listed above. For example, if you wanted to you could do this with subdomain names:
- http://CSharpBlog.YOURDOMAINNAME.com -- your C# blog.
- http://VBNetBlog.YOURDOMAINNAME.com -- your VB.NET blog.
- http://CookingBlog.YOURDOMAINNAME.com -- your cooking blog.
You could accomplish the same thing with paths like this:
- http://www.YOURDOMAINNAME.com/CSharpBlog -- your C# blog.
- http://www.YOURDOMAINNAME.com/VBNetBlog -- your VB.NET blog.
- http://www.YOURDOMAINNAME.com/CookingBlog -- your cooking blog.
I personally prefer the subdomain name: http://blog.YOURDOMAINNAME.com
Here are my reasons:
- It requires less typing.
- It follows the convention established by the big boys like Yahoo and Google.
- mail.yahoo.com
- groups.yahoo.com
- groups.google.com
- etc.
- It is flexible.
If you plan to get really serious about blogging with multiple blogs, I have another recommendation. Establish a clear focus for each blog and get a good domain name for each one. If you do that you can still host all the multiple blogs on a single installation of Subtext. You have any of the above choices of URL architectures, or you use the following choice, which is what I recommend:
- http://blog.YourVBNETDomainName.com -- your C# blog.
- http://blog.YourCSharpDomainName.com --your VB.NET blog.
- http://blog.YourCookingDomain.com -- your cooking blog.
If you do not have any other web applications at those domains, you can let your www-based URL point to your blog also. Subtext will handle that as well. For example:
http://www.YourVBNETDomainName.com -- also points to your C# blog (at least for now)
If you add another application or a home page in addition to your blog, you can handle the www-based path differently later.
You can also do things like this later:
http://store.YourCookingDomain.com -- your cooking supplies e-commerce store.
Compatibility
Everything I have recommended is compatible with Subtext 1.9 and WebHost4Life.
Advanced Topics
Subtext also allows you a lot of control over how your blog's articles are named and how your URL is rewritten. I'll cover those topics in a future article.
UPDATE (4/22/2007):
Search Engine Optimization
This post is in need of revision from a search engine optimization perspective. When it comes to SEO, we need to carefully consider how using a subdomain name, as I have suggested above, could dilute your impact in the search engines. For personal blogs, it might make more sense to consolidate everything under one domain name and organize content with path segments rather than subdomain names. I'll write more about this in the future.