Setting up Network on a subdomain using subfolders

  • I am rather new to all this so bare with me. I am starting a template selling website and this is the only way I’ve figured out how to accomplish what I want it to do and look like:

    mainwebsite.com <- Main WP installation that displays information about my services.

    demos.mainwebsite.com <- Subdomain with a second WP Network installation utilizing subfolders. This is so that I can have:
    demos.mainwebsite.com/demo1
    demos.mainwebsite.com/demo2
    demos.mainwebsite.com/demo3…

    My question is, is having two separate WP installations a bad idea for SEO reasons or otherwise? Or maybe there’s a better way to accomplish this entirely?

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  • Thread Starter canberraway

    (@canberraway)

    Adding: The reason for the Network install is because I can’t have unique theme demos on the mainwebsite.com (only one theme install.) With each subdomain (created from my cPanel) I can display unique settings from one theme install on each multisite (utilizing the WP subfolder option.)

    Since the subdomains are only being used for demos, shouldn’t there not be any real consequences for SEO? Sorry, I am new to this. Thanks in advance!

    I do not believe there is any reason to have two separate networks. Also, you can’t have two separate networks anyway using the same domain name, because the zone file is for the primary domain and the CNAMEs for each subdomain. If you point an A Record to an IP address for a single domain, it’s going to hit apache or nginx on the server and point to the set of files that runs that specific instance. Your CNAMEs for your sub-domains resolve through your zone file, which is assigned to the primary domain anyway.

    You can simply create mainwebsite.com, then spawn new sub-sites as sub-domains in the primary domain network. And, you can use “*” as an A Record so you don’t actually have to add CNAMEs at all in your zone file. You can just spawn new sub-domains in WordPress Network Admin and they’ll instantly resolve, because your wildcard covers any word/term you choose as sub – as long as the site is available in the network.

    I wouldn’t worry as much about SEO on the sub-domains, because Google likes primary domains over sub-domains anyway. And, you’re really SEOing your primary domain. Your sub-domains are just utilities for your primary to host your demo theme configurations. You probably want to no index and no follow those sites anyway, because they don’t offer any real SEO value and you could be penalized for duplicate content if you left them open to be crawled.

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