

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

I am not a coder, and I would like to get HN’s advice.<p>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.<p>That said, our dev is recommending that we use Craft (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;buildwithcraft.com&#x2F;) as the CMS for the blog, tutorials, and for the rest of the site. We&#x27;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&#x2F;browse.<p>He said the only other option is to hack something together using Laravel Bootstrap, (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;davzie&#x2F;laravel-bootstrap) or something similar, for handling the blog and tutorials. The drawback is that it wouldn&#x27;t be as robust.<p>Should we be concerned about using a subdomain for this purpose? Will there be any performance issues? SEO issues? Low T issues?<p>Maybe we’re making a mountain out of an ant nipple, but it&#x27;s hard not being a coder and not knowing any better. I though I’d ask HN’s advice before giving the go ahead.<p>Thank you in advance for your advice.<p>-T
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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
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

~~~
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](http://buildwithcraft.com/docs/sections-and-entries)

~~~
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.

