Is website content partitioning worth while?

Question

In order to allow for multiple policies regarding content... security, cookies, sessions, etc, I'm considering moving some content from my sites to their own domains and was wondering what kinds of dividends it will pay off (If any).

I understand cookies are domain specific and are sent on every request (even for images) so if they grow too large they could start affecting performance, so moving static content in this way makes sense (to me at least).

Since I expect that someone out there has already done something similar, I was wondering if you could provide some feedback of the pros and the cons.

Answer 1

I don't know of any situation that fits your reasons that can't be controlled in the settings for the HTTP server, whether it be Apache, IIS or whatever else you might be using.

I assume you mean you want to split them up into separate hosts, ie www1.domain.com www2.domain.com. And you are correct that the cookies are host/domain specific. However, there aren't really any gains if www1 and www2 are still the same computer. If you are experiencing load issues and split it between two different servers, there could be some gains there.

If you actually mean different domains (www.domain1.com & www.domain2.com) I'm not sure what kind of benefits you would be looking for...