Sub domains break down your domain names into smaller parts by adding another level of control to your domain name
. Sub domains on a particular website help to organize information for that website based on the service, function or collection of information of the domain name. They also act as a direct path to access that service.
Common examples of sub domains are:
http://www.ballisticdomains.com that redirects you to the webserver running this website.
http://hosting.ballisticdomains.com that redirects you to the hosting information pages.
http://domains.ballisticdomains.com that redirects you to the domain registration pages.
http://help.ballisticdomains.com that redirects you to the main Help Center for the website.
http://myaccount.ballisticdomains.com that takes you directly to your Account Manager.
You can name each sub domain what you want to and also have control over the destination address that the sub domain should point to. The hosting registrar should provide you with a simple to use control panel to let you create and manage a sub domain. Sub domains need not even link to the addresses on the same domain name. As long as there is a valid link where you have your sub domain hosted, you can set your sub domain to point directly to that link.
Sub domains can run to 127 levels deep. They are handled by the DNS system (Domain Name System). Each sub domain level can have a maximum of 63 characters. However, all the sub domain names along with the main domain should not exceed 255 characters. Though sub domains forward you to another place, a sub domain can be its real host with its own IP address. A lot of high traffic websites use this technique. This helps them to spread the server load over different servers therefore preventing overloading. So instead of all the load going to a single server, it gets distributed to different servers.
You can create your sub domains any time using the tools that your domain registrar provides once you have created registered the main domain. It is best to use a mixture of lower case characters, numbers and a hyphen when creating sub domains. It may take 24-74 hours for the new sub domain to be known and be able to be used throughout the web.