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Ask HN: Should we take our dev's advice?

1 points by swandive ↗ HN
I am not a coder, and I would like to get HN’s advice.

Our website is a marketplace for digital downloads. The entire system is built on Laravel, and we’re currently looking into options for adding in a blog and tutorial section that will require a CMS.

That said, our dev is recommending that we use Craft (https://buildwithcraft.com/) as the CMS for the blog, tutorials, and for the rest of the site. We'll then move the Laravel system that handles our user system and products into a subdomain. It would look something like browse.oururl.com instead of oururl.com/browse.

He said the only other option is to hack something together using Laravel Bootstrap, (https://github.com/davzie/laravel-bootstrap) or something similar, for handling the blog and tutorials. The drawback is that it wouldn't be as robust.

Should we be concerned about using a subdomain for this purpose? Will there be any performance issues? SEO issues? Low T issues?

Maybe we’re making a mountain out of an ant nipple, but it's hard not being a coder and not knowing any better. I though I’d ask HN’s advice before giving the go ahead.

Thank you in advance for your advice.

-T

8 comments

[ 205 ms ] story [ 786 ms ] thread
smt88
Moving content from one URL to another is going to create SEO issues. The issues aren't permanent, but if you rely on search traffic for cashflow, you just can't do it.

It's possible (but not necessarily as performant) to have your Craft code running at oururl.com/blog and oururl.com/tutorial, but your Laravel code running at your other URLs. It really just depends on how your server is configured (and which server you're using).

Generally speaking, I think there are reasons to use subdomains (addressing different regions perhaps, definitely when running a different SaaS codebase).

For your purposes, I don't see a good reason to use a subdomain, and it does add a little complexity related to configuration, cookies, SSL certs, and user perception.

swandive
Thank you for your feedback!
swandive
He told us that it wouldn't be possible to have Craft running as you mentioned though, and that we'd need to set up subdomains and have two instances of Craft running. One for blog.oururl.com and one for tutorials.oururl.com
gus_massa
I also think that you should try to keep the old URL unchanged.

I'm not an expert in this subject. Is it possible to use something like a Apache redirect or rewrite to implement the different domains under the hood, but show the users only one domain?

smt88
Your dev doesn't know what he's talking about. Get rid of him. You obviously don't trust him enough to be working with him in the first place, if you're coming here for a second opinion.

Craft has the concepts of "singles" (pages) and "channels"[1]. You only need one copy of Craft running.

I can't recommend a file structure without knowing how your current URLs are constructed, but there definitely is a solution that doesn't involve subdomains.

Just as an example, let's say you install Craft to /craft and your existing Laravel code is in /laravel.

You'd configure your server such that "/tutorials/[whatever]" is always directed to /craft/public_html/index.php, and "/products/[whatever]" (assuming /products is your current URL prefix) is always redirected to /laravel/public/index.php.

All that said, Craft may not be the right solution for you. WordPress isn't particularly well-engineered, but it's totally free, there are millions of themes and plugins for it, and the considerations involved in deploying/managing it are discussed to death online. In short: it has a massive community, and that's important when it comes to saving time/money.

1. http://buildwithcraft.com/docs/sections-and-entries

swandive
Thanks again for all of your help.
swandive
He's now decided that the subdomain idea is a bad one, and that we'll run the site on Craft, stick the Laravel portion in a folder "browse" and use the .htaccess file to manipulate the urls so that nothing changes.

Does that make sense?

cauterized
You should be able to run both pieces in different environments and set up a reverse proxy to offer them at different paths under the same domain.