Need Site Structure Advice

[Amandaville]

I used to build my sites in the root directory but lately I've started to building them in subdirectories.

For example, I'll install my CMS like Wordpress or Joomla in a subdirectory such as http://www.domain.com/wp or http://www.domain.com/joomla.

This puts the front page at http://www.domain.com/wp/index.php rather than http://www.domain.com/index.php.

I find that this way I can have a "Coming Soon" page at http://www.domain.com/index.php and when the site is ready to launch, I setup a 301 redirect from http://www.domain.com/ to http://www.domain.com/wp/.

Am I setting myself up for any problems like SEO issues or any other problems now or in the future by doing this? Is there a better, more accepted way? Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

[dcristo]

if you are using wordpress, you can create a static page for the homepage and place the blog posts in the /blog/ sub-directory or whatever.

[INFORG]

You could also do the same with Joomla by adding an index.html page - it will take priority over the .php

301 redirects are going to hurt your SEO

[ftaylor]

Also, search engines look at the path of your urls, the fact that wp is in every one of them won't help you much.