Regional Specific Subdomains

I am preparing a website that is themed for Renaissance Festivals. A lot of the information offered will be specific to certain festivals, and I intend to divide that type of information by location. To separate these categories, I will create subdomains under the main domain (i.e. plantersville.url.com and smithville.url.com). Each of these subdomains will include extensive information on hotels, apartments, restaurants, local craft merchants, local seamstresses, etc.

What I would like to know is whether it would be appropriate to submit each subdomain to the ODP under the regional category appropriate for each? Would each subdomain be considered as a separate site for purposes of submission, or would it be viewed as me trying to get the same site into multiple categories?

Not only do you have the curse before the hurt, you've got the curse backwards and the hurt inside out.

I don't see any reason why unofficial sites on festivals couldn't be listed -- after all, we have enough of them for music festivals! But I see a good many reasons why someone focussed on getting multiple listings for a nonexistant site, would be congenitally incapable of creating a site worth multiple listings.

First develop the site. THEN submit the site according to the guidelines. THEN we can review the actual subpages (rather than your intentions, which aren't ever listable in any case) and give informed advice. And if upon review we can find evidence that the site is truly "exceptional", and truly can't be adequately represented by a listing in one topic, we can discuss the proper approach to listing the site, and once we've determined that, we can discuss the best way to submit it (if in fact any deviations from the standard policy are required.)

I suppose I should also have commented on your URL-layout design, so as not to seem to have neglected it.

Theoretically, subdomains don't give you a privileged position in the ODP procedures. Experientially, at first glance they make you look like a stupidly sneaky spammer. Practically, we try to give a second glance at them because there are some legitimate uses. (dmoz.org is subdomained now, but of course not so as to burden ordinary visitors.)

We prefer the simple domain name wherever possible, because it gives you the most flexibility while causing us the least grief when you reorganize a site. But when push comes to shove, you're the one who decides what URLs will or won't reach the site, and we don't forget that.

Excuse me? I was asking this question as one of my steps in preparing this webpage, so that I can better plan the targetting of my audience. I do not want any kind of "privileged" listing, I just wanted to know if it would be valid for me to submit a subdomain that is region specific to a region specific directory, as opposed to creating an entirely new domain. The site has not been submitted to ODP yet. What I wanted to know was whether adding in the manner described would be against current policies, so that I do not break the ODP rules.

I asked this question here before submitting so that I don't waste the time of ODP editors by submitting inappropriately. I have no intention of submitting any website until I am ready for visitors. While you did answer my question, I feel that the tone used was hostile, and am bewildered as to why that is.

You can create any subdomains you wish. We will only list your main domain, and we will not list redirects like you are describing.

There may be resons why you would consider it advantageous to purchase and implement the domains described, but obtaining multiple listings in the ODP is not one of them. We ask that you do not submit vanity, redirected, or cloaked URLs to the directory.

Thank you xixtas, that was the answer I needed.

We will only list your main domain

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Not entirely true. I would encourage you to read this (and possibly this) part of the guildlines about listing deeplinks and multiple-listed sites.

Right. We may list deeplinks of your main domain. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression there. What I meant was that if you have a domain:

http://stuff_in_mymaindomain.com/ which redirects to http://mymaindomain/stuff/

If we list a deeplink at all, we will list it as http://mymaindomain/stuff/ and not use the vanity URL.

Ah. *nods* Well, I'm still at least three months away from expanding past the first region that I'm targetting, so I believe that I will develop the page, and when I'm ready to expand to a new region revisit here for advice on whether it would be appropriate to submit as a deeplink. Thank you for the information and links.

>I was asking this question ... so that I can better plan the targetting of my audience.
ODP has nothing whatsoever to do with the targetting of your audience. And I don't see what the form of the URL has to do with the targetting of your audience.

What is most important for you to understand is that if you submit to the ODP based on "targeting your audience", you will, absolutely, guaranteed, be spamming. We only allow the guns to be aimed the other way. We don't target the audience, we allow anyone to target the website. (Anyone can use our "Sound Files/MP3" category: twelve-year-old kids or RIAA schoolbus-chasing lawyers.)

>I do not want any kind of "privileged" listing, I just wanted to know if it would be valid for me to submit a subdomain that is region specific to a region specific directory, as opposed to creating an entirely new domain.

You need to understand that the same submittal policy that talks about submitting a site [and not individual pages] once, also talks about not submitting "related" sites. The same rule applies, regardless of what your URL looks like: one submittal per site, regardless of how many pages or subdomains or domains or servers it is spread out over! The only difference between using subdomains and buying separate domains is the former looks at first glance like sneaky spamming, and the latter is almost certain to be taken as prima facie evidence of it.

Plan on no more than one ODP listing. Manipulate your URL all you want, just don't try to manipulate us with it! And plan on targeting your audience elsewhere: when submitting, focus on your TOPIC, and if there's ever an audience for the topic, they will know where to come.

What is most important for you to understand is that if you submit to the ODP based on "targeting your audience", you will, absolutely, guaranteed, be spamming. We only allow the guns to be aimed the other way. We don't target the audience, we allow anyone to target the website. (Anyone can use our "Sound Files/MP3" category: twelve-year-old kids or RIAA schoolbus-chasing lawyers.)

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Submitting to a category on the ODP is a part of audience targetting, since it is a major factor in how the audience finds you. I want people who are interested in my topic to visit, and so I must select an appropriate category. Since the majority of my site is free information, it does me no good and costs me traffic costs to have visitors who are not interested in my topic. You are correct, it is not ODP's concern how I target my audience, but it is my concern. In order to not harm myself through ignorance in submitting to the ODP, I asked my first question on this forum.

You need to understand that the same submittal policy that talks about submitting a site [and not individual pages] once, also talks about not submitting "related" sites.

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Those same policies also indicate that for appropriate sites one entry may be made in the appropriate upper category, and one regional. Hence my question on this forum, considering that over time I will be targetting multiple regions. I originally saw a reference to the regional rule that Ishtar gave the link to through another website. However, for some reason it takes me something like 5-10 tries each to get each page from dmoz.org, which is why I turned to this forum. I originally did a search for region and policies, but couldn't find anything that addressed my question, which led to me posting.

Manipulate your URL all you want, just don't try to manipulate us with it!

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hutcheson, I asked my question to ensure that I would *not* be unfairly or inappropriately manipulating the directory by submitting in the manner I described. If I had followed the advice of the original website that I found the regional rule on, then there would have been multiple submissions made that would probably have been inappropriate from me. Instead of risking that, I asked my question here.

It is not your knowledge of policy that I am arguing with hutcheson (after all, it's my lack of that knowledge that prompted me to ask in the first place), it's the way you presented your answers. In your original reply to me, you indicated that my question meant that I was both a curse and hurt, and that I was incapable of producing quality content. In the followup post that answered my question, you preceded it with:

I suppose I should also have

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Which makes me feel as if I really wasn't worthy of an answer. In addition, indicating that I only asked my question in order to get a "privileged" listing in the directory makes me feel like an utter heel. It feels very hostile to me, and makes me wish that I had never asked a question here at all. Xixtas gave me an answer that was mostly the same thing you stated, with a small addition to address what I replied to you with. Again, it's not the answer I would have hoped for, but it was presented in a plain manner with no comments aimed at me or my skills, and I accepted and thanked Xixtas for it. Ishtar followed up with an addition and direct links to the policy information pertinent to his reply, which helped me realize that I need to put more of the site together before looking at this angle of it. Again, you said the same thing before but Ishtar's answer without the negative comments ("you look like a stupidly sneaky spammer") was more acceptable to me, plus it provided information to help me understand.

To be honest, while I know the necessity of visiting here at a later time when my site is better prepared for others to advise me on is necessary if I want to utilize the deeplink or multi-region rule that Ishtar referenced (if appropriate of course), your response makes me frightened of returning. If it wasn't for the fact that so many search engines base themselves on the ODP listing, then I would definitely not return or even bother submitting for fear of drawing your attention.

Just reread this part, and had one more comment:

First develop the site. THEN submit the site according to the guidelines. THEN we can review the actual subpages (rather than your intentions, which aren't ever listable in any case) and give informed advice.

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I did not ask for a review, I asked about policy and indicated that I had not written the site yet. I asked my question here as a series of steps that I'm taking in preparation of writing the site. By doing so, I follow the adage of "Measure twice, cut once." By asking my questions, including this one, I do not waste my time in writing unnecessary code or using unnecessary architechture, and I also save the time of the ODP editors by not making multiple inappropriate submissions. By getting a policy question answered now, I have saved the editors the time necessary for reviewing a site based on an awkward and inappropriate assumption.

OK, you wanted a policy? You can do whatever you want, but we might not list everything or anything you submit. One main entry page pointing to everything else would be appreciated.

Trying to figure out which hidden assumptions were in the original question were most critical, and addressing them, I inadvertantly overlooked what, in the context, could have been construed as a question (even though, after the assumptions were corrected, it wouldn't be a relevant question.) Hence the double response.

As for the heart and the course ... experience is that submittals that we gave tacit pre-approval to, have almost invariably turned out to be sites we really shouldn't have listed at all. So asking us for pre-approval puts you in very bad company.

If you focus on content, and start out by building a truly content-rich site on a topic, the editors will be falling over each other to link it -- richly. They'll be giving you unsolicited advice on how to get more links to the reviewing editors more quickly, in hopes you'll submit your new topic pages as they're completed.

Conversely, if you start out hunting for links, what you need most (from the reviewer's standpoint) is unsolicited advice on the necessity of collecting content ... and perhaps on the difficulty of the same. If you choose to see that as painful, well: but it is still less than the travail of generating "exceptional" content.

OK, you wanted a policy? You can do whatever you want, but we might not list everything or anything you submit. One main entry page pointing to everything else would be appreciated.

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kctipton, I don't know where this response came from. My policy question was answered between ishtar, xixtas, and hutcheson. Except for the last sentence in your statement, what you said is useless to the question asked. Your last statement was simply a repeat of what has already been said.

What was the point that you were trying to make? That in the end I shouldn't care about policy at all, but rather should bombard you with multiple submissions that waste the editor's time and engender bad feeling on both sides? Or that I'm not worthy of asking questions at all?

hutcheson, thank you for responding. Giving what you have posted, I can understand why you made certain assumptions about me. I had not meant my question to be construed as a request for pre-approval.

I had been given the understanding that the ODP was a major factor in considering any kind of website that was tightly targetted at a small niche market, and that offending any editor in the ODP would result in any further attempts at inclusion in the ODP would be exponentially more difficult. My intentions were to ask my question to prevent any ill-will fostered by inappropriately or incorrectly submitting a website, and the answers given have shown me that the original information that I had referrenced through a third website was completely incorrect.

While it may not have appeared that way, I was not hunting for links. I posted my question in roughly 5 minutes after about an hour of attempting to find information on the dmoz website and searching the forum, and all I really expected was a yes or no answer with hopefully some direct links to further information. I didn't even put the URL up for my site because all I really wanted was a yes or no on the question, nothing really about the site itself.

I listed as much information as I did in the first post as an emphasis that each of these subdomains were tightly oriented at local sources for these areas, and only of interest to people in the area (usually one small town) or intending to visit the area, a very very tight market. As for the specific content that I intend to make available, any comment that I could make about how much I have or intend to put up is both moot and laughable until they are actually online.

Right now we're waiting until we find a graphic artist that satisfies our needs before putting anything online. In a few months to a year, when we have enough pertinent material to target a second local market, I will make another post with an actual link to the page to discuss whether it would be appropriate to either multi-submit or deep link to the content. *shrug*

...that offending any editor in the ODP would result in any further attempts at inclusion in the ODP would be exponentially more difficult.

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I wanted to address this concern because I think it may be a key part of the misunderstanding here. We publish the work of people who have offended nearly everyone here. What we care about, both by 'policy' and also by culture is the content of the site. The conduct of the owner has to be extremely disruptive before we would even consider not listing a quality web resource because of it. You have not in any way jeapordized possible future listing by expressing your opinion or asking questions here.

hutcheson and kctipton are extremely knowledgeable and dedicated editors, and they would be two of the first to remind (or more depending on the circumstances) any editor who was thinking about not publishing or removing a site for personal reasons that it is the site that matters, not the owner or creator.

Regards.

Fresh view here, trying to go back to what I perceived the underlying question to be...

First, we don't care about your site structure, we care about your content. All of these forms would be considered the same site (for all intents and purposes) no matter how, or even if, they are interlinked:

1. www.rennfairinfo.com/smallville/ www.rennfairinfo.com/tinytown/
2. smallville.rennfairinfo.com tinytown.rennfairinfo.com
3. www.smallvillerennfairinfo.com www.tinytownrennfairinfo.com

Generally, we list www.rennfairinfo.com at the highest appropriate geographic level covering all its contents. If the separate URLs aren't linked from the main level, we considered that the webmaster's problem, and won't list individual urls or subdomains just because they aren't linked together. If smallville and tinytown are both in California, it would be listed at the California state level (under Recreation), if they we in different states, at the US level, and in different countries, at the continent level or else only in Topical. Most directory sites are treated this way.

There are some cases where there is plentiful unique content that warrants deeplinking a specific subpage within that locality. The question then becomes, how much is plentiful? This is hard to judge without looking at an actual site. My quick thoughts:

- a directory of renn fairs; no deeplinking
- a directory of renn fairs with subdirectories of local businesses; no deeplinking
- a directory of renn fairs with subdirectories of local businesses that contain short reviews of all of the businesses and perhaps special deals/coupons; might be worth deeplinking
- a directory of renn fairs with subdirectories of local businesses that contain short reviews of all of the businesses and perhaps special deals/coupons, which also has extensive photos of past events, articles from local newspapers, personal perspectives, links to PHP of local renn fair enthusiasts, forums for locals to discuss and plan attendance, etc. ; probably worth deeplinking.

My advice - build your directory in whatever way makes the most sense for your own purposes, give it excellent navigation to all of the subsections from both the main page and between subsections, and submit the main url once to the most appropriate level of geographic coverage. If any of the subsections grows to have content of the type, quantity, and quality that I outlined in the last bullet, then submit that deeplink to the appropriate locality for consideration.

Hope that helps.