Thread: What is the purpose of a Subdomain?

I have looked at a load of threads on subdomains, and I'm sure they're all really useful, but this is all new to me and I don't know what purpose a subdomain serves.

Within my site I plan on having a forum. Taking an slightly educated guess, I thought putting forum.mysite.com as a subdomain. Would this make sense, as I originally thought the forum page would simply be ... www.mysite.com/forum

What's the difference?
Why subdomains?

From your post, I can see that basically you have noticed how a subdomain works (forum.mysite.com)

You could also create a new folder called forum and then your forum address would be www.mysite.com/forum

Subdomains are useful if you wish several different departments/headings:
for you main website:
sales.mysite.com
admin.mysite.com
software.mysite.com

etc......................All are within seperate folders within your main site.

have fun

Ok, thanks.

As far as I can tell, that doesn't have too much to do with adding my 'Domain as an add-on domain' (I have just set up an account and updated DNS server etc...)

The 3 boxes are

New Domain Name: Fine, the domain I registered

Username/directory/subdomain: Don't know what to put, tutorial doesn't explain what this is. Is it username (one I was sent in welcome email) A subdomain? (eg forum)

Password: Which password (again one from email?)

I'm sure this is very straight forward, but if you could help me I would be very grateful. Assume 0 knowledge of tech terminology in explanation.


NB The video tutorials are good at explaining how to do things but include little info about what the actual required information is. Seems to assume full knowledge of all terminology.

Username/directory/subdomain: Don't know what to put, tutorial doesn't explain what this is. Is it username (one I was sent in welcome email) A subdomain? (eg forum) Leave it blank, CP will fill it in with the same name of your addon.However, if you want to use another name for your addon folder, type in this other name.

Password: Which password (again one from email?)

Your choice, the one from the mail or anyother you want for this addon.


Hope this helps.

Thank you Naval, you are a true hero.

That sort of stuff (like leave it blank if you want...) should be put in tutorials for idiots like me.