In designing a complex site with major sub-sections (maybe 20 to 50), what is the significance of setting of subdomains vs directories.
1) There's a difference in how visitors experience the URL (e.g., news.cbs.com vs. cbs.com/news) of course. Within my company (e.g., news.cbs.com + accting.cbs.com + hr.cbs.com + sanitation.cbs.com...) this might seem attractive to departments.
2) But what about for the server (not my hardware but from a hosting service)? Although I understand that a subdomain really just points to some directory. But Hosting packages always limit subdomain quantities, leading me to think that they must somehow require more server resources. Is that true?
3) I'd like to understand the long-term implications of other issues for subDOMAINS / directories, e.g.: A) If one department got so active on the site that its section needed to be moved to a separate dedicated server, would such an expansive move be easier if departments had their own subdomains rather than just a directory? B) Could such a blossoming department that starts as just a directory be easily converted later to a subdomain?
4) Where should a developer wannabee be studying up on these issues (instead of bugging the forum) -- i.e., do I need to get training in Apache, etc. to understand how what I plan in site development makes demands on the server? Again: please help me figure out even how to ask the right question so I can begin to get at least a conceptual feel for how my vision for site dev interacts with server capability.
[ If the above makes little sense, maybe you can at least guide this weak-geek to some primer short of going back to school in IS. ]
Gracias, guys!
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