🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Aug 20, 2018 05:15 PM UTC:
Having started on this, it seems to me that things would go more easily if all internal links were relative links. But having part of the site in a separate subdomain makes this impossible. Links between the main site and the subdomain have to be full links, and full links have to either HTTP or HTTPS. Relative links have the benefit of conforming to whatever the page being viewed is.
I looked into this further this morning, and the pages I read argued that putting everything on one domain is better for SEO. A subdomain is treated like a separate site, and it does not inherit the authority of the main site. Given that the main site and the subdomain are interrelated, sharing links and images, and that the main site has a good amount of authority that I would like the play part of the site to benefit from, I think it would be a good idea to replace the subdomain with a subdirectory. The subdomain is already physically located in a subdirectory, and 301 redirects could be used to direct subdomain links to the subdirectory.
Once that is done, I could make all internal links relative. This would get rid of the HTTPS links I started to add yesterday. And when all links are relative, it would be a lot easier to convert the whole site to HTTPS at once.
Having started on this, it seems to me that things would go more easily if all internal links were relative links. But having part of the site in a separate subdomain makes this impossible. Links between the main site and the subdomain have to be full links, and full links have to either HTTP or HTTPS. Relative links have the benefit of conforming to whatever the page being viewed is.
I looked into this further this morning, and the pages I read argued that putting everything on one domain is better for SEO. A subdomain is treated like a separate site, and it does not inherit the authority of the main site. Given that the main site and the subdomain are interrelated, sharing links and images, and that the main site has a good amount of authority that I would like the play part of the site to benefit from, I think it would be a good idea to replace the subdomain with a subdirectory. The subdomain is already physically located in a subdirectory, and 301 redirects could be used to direct subdomain links to the subdirectory.
Once that is done, I could make all internal links relative. This would get rid of the HTTPS links I started to add yesterday. And when all links are relative, it would be a lot easier to convert the whole site to HTTPS at once.