Plan A or Plan B?

[Aminka Ozmun]

Okay, so in working on my 3dcart site, I've come to realize that while I generally like their shopping cart software, for the kind of business I'm in -- aspiring author selling her own eBooks -- I need the robust blogging and social marketing/community-building capabilities available with a WordPress site.

3dcart doesn't allow WP, but like I said, I generally like their eCommerce solution-set.

So should I just keep my domain on 3dcart's servers and have the WP blog be a subdomain (blog.mysite.com) or do a WordPress site on another host and have the 3dcart shopping cart be a subdomain (store.mysite.com)?

I'm leaning towards the latter, as it seems that given my line of work here the store aspect of things is subordinate to the communal/fan-building aspect of things.

But does any one have experience with this kind of a situation, having your site split between two webhosts?? What are the potential disadvantages, if any? Does it even matter in any way at all??


Thanks for all opinions!

[SnerpGoodWord]

I would make the site that is going to be the primary search target the primary domain. I'm presuming that would be the wordpress site, but I could see it being structured either way - a blog/community that happens to sell things, or a store that happens to have a community for its customers.

[Aminka Ozmun]

Thanks, SnerpGoodWord!

It seems either way is good to me too in the abstract but given my line of business as a would-be purveyor of stories it feels like it's more about community first. In fact, CNN's recent story on the demise of the Borders bookstore chain implied about as much!

I guess what I'm wondering is whether there are any technical disadvantages or inconveniences, including SEO-wise, from splitting operations across two webhosts. From what I gather, there really is none -- but just wanted to double-check with you smart(er) people here!

[SnerpGoodWord]

I'm not aware of any. It's also technically possible to have one domain served up by multiple hosts via load balancing type hardware, but that's probably not where you want to go due to complexity.

[Aminka Ozmun]

Thanks again, SnerpGoodWord! I probably should have asked on Steve's tech forum, but I'm glad you cleared up the situation for me!

[Thunderkeg]

According to me Plan A is more perfect

[splok]

I would use a subdirectory instead of a subdomain.
(www.domain.com/product instead of product.domain.com)

The subdomain will be treated as a separate site for SEO purposes, so your optimizing work will end up divided. Using a subdirectory will allow your efforts on both areas to more easily support each other.

[Aminka Ozmun]

Originally Posted by Thunderkeg

According to me Plan A is more perfect

Luckily, there was Plan C: WordPress!

[Aminka Ozmun]

Originally Posted by splok

I would use a subdirectory instead of a subdomain.
(www.domain.com/product instead of product.domain.com)

The subdomain will be treated as a separate site for SEO purposes, so your optimizing work will end up divided. Using a subdirectory will allow your efforts on both areas to more easily support each other.

Thanks for that interesting observation, Splok! Made me look up the topic and gave me some ideas for when such a situation would be ideal, actually....