Subdomains: Well, Everyone Else Is Doing It.

I had a phone call today that made me really think about subdomains for the first time in a while.

I’m working on a project that can basically be described as something of a social network for artists. The details are unimportant¹ but the upshot is that the artist can have something of a home page. The call was to get the designer, clients, and developer all playing on the same sheet of music, and I was laying out some of the possible option for various pieces, one of which was “should we implement subdomains for the artists profile.”

Why? Because johnmetta.thissite.com would be better than thissite.com/johnmetta? It’s embarrasing to admit now, but it’s not even something I thought about. I didn’t even consider the reason we’d implement a subdomain, I just added it to the list.

Subdomains

I started administering Unix systems back in the early 90′s, not too long ago, granted, but long enough ago that I have a history building server networks. From the beginning, server names had a mixture of comedy and reverence. I name my testing server Loki, and it’s both a joke and something I take seriously. Subdomains are, in essence, server names for networks,². Even if they are named after a Star Wars character, subdomains are always meaningful. Meaningful in that the subdomain– the sub-network, this small, divided portion of the total network– is providing a service that is fundamentally separated from the main network.³ Originally, “www.thissite.com” was a subdomain that meant “The World Wide Web accessible version of this network,” which is fundamentally different from “mail.thissite.com,” which a web browser wouldn’t handle. Different functions.

De-valuing the domain

This is true of networks, but early on in the web, it started being applied to individual sites (which are really just networks of information anyway). I might have a johnmetta.com domain with a network of pages that talks about me, and a separate blog.johnmetta.com which is really not the same function as johnmetta.com (who am I, what do I do?), while still being part of the larger johnmetta.com “network.” In a way, this is an early devaluing of the concept of subdomain concept, I guess. Is blog.johnmetta.com really a subdomain in the same way that mail.johnmetta.com is different than www.johnmetta.com? Or is johnmetta.com/blog really what we’re talking about?

These days, subdomains are everywhere. Everything from ilovemycat.someblogthing.com to my much used johnmetta.freshbooks.com account. WordPress, 37 Signals, ZenDesk, FreshBooks, plenty of sites give you a subdomain if you want it. It’s everywhere now and it’s gotten almost to the point of expectation.

I remember a few years ago thinking “What? A subdomain for that? That’s weird.” But honestly, I didn’t give it too much more thought. It was weird, I didn’t really think it fit, but I moved on. Over time, I think I’ve gotten a bit desensitized to their presence. It’s almost like there are “real” subdomains (what I use in my server networks), and there are “fake” subdomains, like johnmetta.zendesk.com, about which I just kind of think “eh, whatever” and move on.⁴

As embarrassing as it is, I have to admit that I just stopped thinking about them. So when a member of this conference call said that using subdomains wouldn’t be valuable partially because “they massively de-value the concept of the subdomain,” I was kind of taken aback. Mostly because I think he’s right.

Is creating a subdomain for everyone stupid, or useful? I tend to lean toward the “it’s stupid” side, I think– at least I want to believe I do. What’s the real different between going to wordpress.com/myblog and myblog.wordpress.com? Is it meaningful, or is it just some weird vanity? Honestly, myblog is not providing anything functionally different from wordpress.com. In fact, in everyway I can think about it, wordpress.com/myblog is fundamentally more correct, because myblog is, in fact, the exact functionality that wordpress.com is providing.

I think I agree that subdomains are de-valued. Yet I suggested them. I added them to the list. Why? The only reason I can come up with is: “Well, everyone else is doing it.” That’s a rather embarrassing reason.

A Different Meaning

I guess you could argue something like “They mean a different thing now.” But do they really? I’m not so sure. I think they mean the same thing, and we just use it lazily. As if I were saying “well, I have, like, this subdomain and, like, I can visit it from anywhere.” I’m not using “like” in the right way, but mostly people are just going to say “Eh, whatever” because everyone is doing it. We’re desensitized to the Valley Girl.

But maybe it’s true. Maybe they do have a different meaning- at least in the context of The Web. I mean you want to talk about devaluing the subdomain? Look at sites like ma.gnolia.com (now, sadly, defunct, but no less brilliant in its absence), which use the subdomain purely as a way to create a word. They don’t just devalue the subdomain, they devalue the main domain. I’ve even created one of these. I named http://kwisatz.hadera.ch purely to get that name. The domain hadera.ch has absolutely no meaning, and the subdomain kwisatz means just as little. It only has meaning in the context of the whole address.

So, I say that I agree that subdomains shouldn’t be devalued, and I create sites like kwisatz.hadera.ch which totally devalue them. I guess I’m up in the air, speaking like a Valley Girl and complaining about people’s grammer. I think subdomains should have value, I really do, but I also like my kwisatz.hadera.ch. I don’t actually think that johnmetta.wordpress.com is any more meaningful as wordpress.com/johnmetta, yet I have a freshbooks account which is at johnmetta.freshbooks.com.

This is the first time I’ve actually sat and thought about subdomains in a while. I don’t have any answers about this question, but I do think it’s an interesting question.

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1. and still somewhat secretive [↩]
2. I’m arguing “network” here because I’m thinking of “network function,” and it’s still the case even if that “network” is a single server- or, even just a different virtual host [↩]
3. There are subtle arguments and plenty of flamewar munitions in this definition, I’m sure, I’m simplifying, and I’m okay with that. [↩]
4. Wikipedia calls them “vanity domains” which I think fits quite nicely, actually [↩]