Why use a Subdomain?

Rails
1

New to Ruby on Rails. I’ve been playing around with an application I set
up at rails.foo.com.

Basically this means that all my pages tied to the application live on
that subdomain. Is there any reason for not just installing onto your
parent domain foo.com and putting your static pages in the public dir
that ruby on rails creates?

The answer seems like a simple yes, however all the install docs I
looked at indicate a subdomain installation.

Why?

Thanks.

2

it’s not rails, it’s the webserver in front of it, which decides whether
and
where subdomains get mapped to.
If your ISP handles the webserver at your foo.com domain, then you have
to
stick to what you get, if you configure it yourself, then look out for
the
doc on how to do it propperly

3

I use subdomains because I can’t figure out how to get Lighty to map
these two URLs to different document roots:

I’ve tried various combinations of conditionals in the config, to no
avail. So instead I use forums.xyz.com. If anybody know how to do this,
please share :).

Joe

4

I’m using Dreamhost.

I think Joe explains why I want to stick with subdomains.