installing a forum: which folder do you use?

[paintballer.ie]

I will be installing new forum software soon on my site and I want to get some opinions.

Currently I have the old forum software installed in my root directory a I wanted to keep things looking nice and neat in the address bar, even though they are still dynamic urls.... which does not matter much any more. www.paintballer.ie is the example if you want check it out.

So, with the new install, I was thinking of installing it in a directory called 'community'. The forum will not be the front page, I am using a blog for that.

Any tips or experiences to share?

[blacknight]

I tend to run stuff off subdomains if they're not in the document root

[Byron]

can make it a bit tidyier alright for links, etc.

Like forum.XXXXX.ie is a bit nicer to see than xxxx.ie/forum - however which one is read better by the casual user on business cards / flyers is anyones guess.

From the point of view of keeping things more orderly, I prefer subdomains, I'm not an expert with actual file management on servers, but I would imagine there would be some small increase in load time direct with a subdomain, mind you I could be talking through my AHEM...

I would prefere to read xxxxx.ie/forum than forum.xxxxxx.ie, but bebo uses subdomains for user profiles and people like bebo!

[conorod]

I install all my forums in the root folder.