Blog Tipz

Here’s a piece of advice for new bloggers and people interested in starting new sites: Don’t install your blog or use a folder as your main blog. There are only a few cases that it would be worthwhile to use this, and they are few and far between.

The main reason for this is the fact that you might want to later convert to the main domain, as follows:

– http://www.blog.com/blog/

… later changing it to:

– http://www.blog.com/

If you use an automated installer, it is particularly hard to make sure that you don’t make the mistake of installing it in a folder, such as /wp/ or /blog/. If you speed through the installer, there are ways to convert it over after the fact, but you will need to be knowledgeable about editing the .htaccess file.

Under the following situations you should stick with an alternative, off-main domain structure:

• When readers should be able to quickly access the sub-site, but content shouldn’t filter into the main site (through use of categories or tags for the topic).
• You want to create an additional blog or separate area for your site.
• You are a part of a business, in which you want to keep the blog separate from the main site.
• You want to save some money by not having to purchase an additional domain for a project that “may or may not” work out.

Reasons to avoid subdomains and folders:

• They are not as search engine friendly as placing all content on the main domain, as individual posts.
• People will have a harder time finding your main content or the main focus of your blog, unless you redirect it to the right location.
• It will be harder to get people to subscribe, as they think that you are working for someone else under their name (making it appear more like a Blogspot-hosted blog than your own site.

Again, this is just a word of warning if you are planning on placing your blog within a subdomain or folder off of another site. You want to make your site as uncomplicated as possible for your readers to access. As long as all your focus is on the main site, why not use it? 

I also realize that you may have personal preferences where you place content, but everything looks nicer when you have all URLs as http://site.com rather than using a longer, more complicated sub-domain or folder structure.

Note: This does not pertain to users of Blogger or WordPress.com – that is a different case.