What is: Subdomain

A subdomain is an additional part to your main domain name. Subdomains are created to organize and navigate to different sections of your website. You can create multiple subdomains or child domains on your main domain.

For example:

store.yourwebsite.com

In this example, ‘store’ is the subdomain, ‘yourwebsite’ is the primary domain and ‘.com’ is the top level domain (TLD). You can use any text as your subdomain, but you want to make sure it’s easy to type and remember.

There are different reasons why companies use subdomains. Let’s take a look at some of the top use cases of a subdomain.

Use cases of Subdomain

The most common use-case of a subdomain is for creating testing or staging version of a website. You can install WordPress on your subdomain, and it will work as a completely separate installation from your main site. Often developers test new plugins and updates on a subdomain staging site before publishing on the live site.

You can also create subdomains for particular users on your site like ‘guest.yourwebsite.com’, ‘user.yourwebsite.com’ and more. These subdomains will use your hosting space. This is how websites like WordPress.com, blogger.com, and others offer custom websites to other users.

Another common use of a subdomain is to create an online ecommerce store. Often companies want a separate subdomain to handle transactions because eCommerce sites typically require more sophisticated configurations.

We have also seen companies use subdomains for their mobile websites (m.yoursite.com), location specific sites (uk.yoursite.com), and creating sub-sections of the website.

Subdomains can be very useful in organizing your website content more efficiently. The right use of a subdomain does not effect your website’s SEO. However when in doubt, we recommend keeping everything on the same domain and avoid using subdomain for public sites.

Additional Reading