I am planning to use Webflow to create a portfolio site for my new web design business. As I don’t have customers yet, I plan to build at least three or four “example” sites to show potential customers what I can build for them. Here are my questions:
Can I create my portfolio site and then use subdomains for each of the example sites like this, with each example site being a separate static site:
I remember “Webflow guy” doing something like this in the 2021 Portfolio course but I didn’t quite understand how this would work in terms of actually publishing the sub sites.
If I can do what I propose above, can I publish my portfolio site and each of the subdomain sites under a single Basic (or perhaps CMS) Website Site Plan or would I have to pay for 4 separate Website Site Plans?
And if I can’t publish all four sites as one website, could I perhaps build all four sites but export the three example sites and host them outside of Webflow and just pay for my top-level portfolio site with a Webflow site plan? My main portfolio site would then have links to these external websites. I’m asking this because if I were to build maybe a half dozen static sites just for the purpose of attracting customers, it could get quite expensive given that I don’t yet have any revenues. Thanks for your advice.
Can I create my portfolio site and then use subdomains for each of the example sites like this, with each example site being a separate static site
Totally, when setting up your hosting on a project you can link it to a subdomain (rather than a root domain) and have the structure work as expected.
If I can do what I propose above, can I publish my portfolio site and each of the subdomain sites under a single Basic (or perhaps CMS) Website Site Plan or would I have to pay for 4 separate Website Site Plans?
You’d need 4 separate sites (unfortunately) however it would be awesome if certain Account plan levels allowed for that level of white labeling for your “staging” domains.
One (less graceful) option is to forward those subdomains to either the default staging url (your-project.webflow.io—this would keep is as a fully-featured site project but omit the branding after the redirection) or a folder on your main site (your-site.com/your-project---this would affect your site structure but keep things branded after the redirection).
The best option—if you’re only planning on having “static” sites (and you’ve got a paid Account plan)—is exporting the projects and hosting them on Netlify. Their free plan is pretty robust, allowing you to upload the exported zip files (projects) and point them towards a unique subdomain. Your URL structure stays in tact and you don’t need to worry about forwarding the user.