I’m going to take a break from our usual video training to give you a quick web tip. We all know that portfolios are important, but it is becoming more and more common for people to use sites like YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, etc. to show off their work. Why is this a good idea? Well, because a lot of people are already on these sites, so it improves your chances of people coming across your work.
The problem is that the URLs for your accounts on these sites can be a mile long. Some sites support custom URLs, but it’s not always an option. For example, Facebook requires 1000 fans before you can use a custom URL.
That’s where subdomains can be a great resource. Say you’ve already setup your website: mydomain.com, and you use that for your email and main portfolio. The next step is to log into your host’s website. I use DreamHost, but the steps are fairly similar with other hosts.
Click on Manage Domains and then click on Add New Domain/Sub-Domain.
Type in the subdomain you want to use. For example, I’ll type in facebook.nextwavedv.com. Then click Fully Host This Domain.
Go back to Manage Domains and you should see your new subdomain listed under your existing domain.
Click Edit next to the subdomain. Scroll down to Redirect and type in the URL you want the subdomain to link to. Here I’ll type in my Facebook page URL for NextWaveDV.
And there you go! You can do this with any URL and subdomain as long as you already own the domain. Use subdomains in emails, business cards, or anything that you don’t want to spell out a long URL.
Nice post Tony. I am an Online marketer and know a few things about SEO. Rather than creating new sub domains it is actually better to create sub folders in your main domain as it is better for SEO purposes.
The short of it is, that if you keep everything under one domain then you get more love from Google as it treats everything as one site. When you have multiple subdomains like Photo.xyz.com rather than xyz.com/photo then it is essentially like having multiple domains.
Subdomains have their place but I always try to use a separate folder and throw another website up on that folder if needing be. I would recommend doing that to make sure you get more love from the Search engines but it really is up to each individual depending on what they want to achieve with their different web properties.
Keep rocking the videos. I sure wish you guys went into a lot more depth on those HDSLR 101 videos. They are good but man I was wanting a lot more in depth information. How about comiong out with some new in depth ones soon. Especially using the Canon cameras 😉
Kyle