Subdomain or URL: customer.acmecompany.com or acmecompany.com/customer

What's reasons should be for moving functionality into subdomain, example,

cusomer portal - customers.acmecompany.com

forum - forum.acmecomp开发者_如何学Cany.com

Instead of making it

acmecompany.com/Customers

acmecompany.com/help

One good reason for using sub-domains would be if apps are hosted on different computers. Then you can let DNS do the appropriate routing for you whereas with the acmecompany.com/$APPNAME version you would have to set up a front end proxy. If all of your apps are hosted on the same machine (and will be for the foreseeable future) this is a non-issue.

From a user-experience standpoint I would also argue that if the apps look significantly different or require different logins then they should be in subdomains. If I click a link and end up on a page that LOOKS like a different app or requires a new login then I expect it to be at a different FQDN. But this point is very subjective.

Other than that I think it's just whatever is easier for you to set up.