Domain names? Main domain, add on domain or 3rd level domain

[hjz]

Trying to figure out the domain name route. On a shared plan on Host Gator I can have unlimited domains.

Found this link in the Plr Pro forum
http://www.plrpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47 that talks about 3rd level domain names.

What does every one else use?

Any suggestions?

hjz

[ahri22]

I hadn't heard of third level domains before....

I use Addon domains, because that's the way my Hostgator account works (I don't have a reseller account).

To me a third level domain sounds like a subdomain (well...it looks like a subdomain) It just sounds like a more complex way of making a subdomain...

Personally, for the 90 day challenge I would use domains (so Addon domains is fine) and not subdomains. (I believe Marc and Daniel recommended somewhere that you use domains).

However, down the track there's nothing wrong with setting up subdomains on more general domain names and putting sites there. I have found I can sell text link ads off subdomains, just as well as I can off domains, and as it saves me money to create subdomains, I fully intend to make more in the future.

Hope that helped and wasn't too confusing!!

Cheers
Fiona

[SteveH]

I have a hosting package with midPhase (not a reseller account), which allows unlimited domains. The monthly cost is about $15/mth, but you have to pay 1 year in advance on my package (Pro-Phase). I had to register an initial domain with them to set up the account: www.maindomain.com .

So when I am setting up a new site, what I do is this:

1. Register a new domain with GoDaddy: www.newsite.com (max cost $8.95)
2. At GoDaddy, go into "manage domains", and change the DNS Servers to the two server names provided by midPhase when I first set the hosting account up.
3. Go into my midPhase account, select "Addon Domains", and follow the instructions to add on newdomain.com

What this does is it creates a subdomain folder for the new site, www.newsite.maindomain.com This is the location where you load your site (eg blog) for www.newsite.com

However, the beauty of this system is two-fold:
1. When the internet user types in www.newsite.com, then the newsite.com website shows in their browser, and the web address shows as www.newsite.com (not www.newsite.maindomain.com). So they have no idea that www.newsite.com is actually located in a sub-directory of another site.
2. The web hosting for www.newsite.com is free, because there are unlimited domains included in the midPhase package.

Is the "value" of www.newsite.com affected by it being located in a sud-domain of www.maindomain.com? Well, I have no proof either way, but I have a number of such sites now, and they seem to be doing fine. I believe that other factors are far more important to the success of www.newsite.com than where it is physically located. But I'm not an IM guru, so others with more knowledge than me may disagree on this point.

The key for me is that it seems to be working well, and because I am aiming to have 100 sites up in the not-too-distant future, I don't want to pay 100 x $8-10 per month for separate hosting for each site.

Hope this helps.

Best regards
Steve H

[manxman]

Originally Posted by SteveH

... and because I am aiming to have 100 sites up in the not-too-distant future, I don't want to pay 100 x $8-10 per month for separate hosting for each site.

One question I have about this is the plus and/or minus to having a large number of accounts on one server. I am sure I read somewhere that it is best to move on to a new host when you have a certain number of sites on the first server. Is this true? About how many should I limit the first hosting site to?

thanks

Richard

[SteveH]

Originally Posted by manxman

One question I have about this is the plus and/or minus to having a large number of accounts on one server. I am sure I read somewhere that it is best to move on to a new host when you have a certain number of sites on the first server. Is this true? About how many should I limit the first hosting site to?

Good question. The "plus" is obviously that, the more sites you have on the one hosting account, the more money you save. However there are some "minuses", including:

1. If you have related sites that you want to link to each other to improve SE rankings, then having those sites on the same server means that the SE's will give the links no value.
2. If the server is down for some reason, then if you have all your sites on the one server then all of your sites will be down.
3. If you do something naughty and get one of your sites banned by say Google, then it may well get all of your sites on the same server blacklisted.

In practice, I use several hosting companies. For example, I have a cluster of sites on one topic, and because the older sites have reasonable pagerank, I put links from those sites to my new sites as soon as they are up. I put these sites on different hosts so that the links count to the SE's.

What's the ideal number on one server? I don't know. I will probably go for no more than about 20-25 sites per server. I don't intend my first 100 sites to be on 100 different topics, so will need to spread them around a bit anyway.

Best regards
Steve H

[Marc]

Hey Steve,

Few things out of place in that last statement :P

But yes it is good to spread sites out over your servers.

Google will still give value to links from similar sites on the same IP address. (providing they are both unique), and if you do something naughty on the same IP you wont get all your sites banned on that ip, unless you are doing the same "naughty" thing on all sites.

Having said that, it is better to have a seperate ip for each site, or if you can't do that I do 10 sites to each ip.

Regards
Marc