A Subdomain in its simplest form, is your domain name with a prefix, seperated by a dot, in the format of prefix.yourdomainname.com, creating a URL which can be used for its own purpose.
For example, if you had freeola.com registered as a domain name, you could create a subdomain called chat.freeola.com. This could then be used to create an entirely different website to freeola.com.
Another example could be the subdomain mail.freeola.com, which can be used to connect to one of Freeola's incoming mail servers. As a different server is used to the freeola.com website, a subdomain prefix of mail has been added to the domain name to create a URL for an incoming mail server.
Creating a Subdomain
The process for creating a subdomain will vary depending on your web host, however if you are using Freeola, you are able to create and edit subdomains from within your MyFreeola Control Panel, by selecting "Domain Names" followed by DNS, Subdomains & Forwarding from the left hand navigation.
You are able to check whether a subdomain is in place on your domain name either from within your MyFreeola Control Panel as above or by using Freeola's Domain DNS Lookup tool. In the Domain DNS Lookup tool, you would need to enter your domain name into the box provided and click Check to run a lookup on your domain. To then check a specific subdomain, visit the Custom tab, set the record type to Any, enter the prefix into the Alias field and click Run Query. You will then be shown any records in place on that subdomain.
How are Subdomains used?
There are may uses for subdomains, below are some examples of how subdomains can be used.
To create separate websites
If you have a website in place which uses many pages and subdirectories, and are looking to create a website which would be entirely seperate, you may wish to consider using a subdomain.
To provide a URL to customers
Freeola use subdomains to provide free subdomain URLs for customers to use with any of Freeola's web hosting services. Customers are able to select from the hundreds of domain names available, then set any subdomain prefix to use as their website URL.
To provide an easy to remember url to access services
Subdomains are often used to create an easy to remember reference to access services. Some example of common subdomain prefixes used this way are listed below.
www.
Over the history of the World Wide Web, www. has become a very common subdomain prefix to use for a website. Although recently, when visiting most websites, no www. is required.
mail. / pop. / imap.
The mail, pop and imap subdomain prefixes are often used to reference mail servers, and will usually need to be entered into any email programs when they initially configured.
smtp.
The smtp prefix is often used to reference an email server configured to send out email messages.
ns.
The ns subdomain prefix is used for name servers, which are servers designed to index the dns records for a domain name. For example, freeola.net has the ns3.freeola.net and ns4.freeola.net name servers assigned. These servers index the IP addresses of all services that use the freeola.com domain name.
ftp.
The ftp subdomain prefix is generally used for storing the location of an FTP server which is used to store files. This would then be used to upload / download files as required.
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