[b]

I'm a web design student looking to create my portfolio where I can show websites I've made as school projects - they are not used by businesses as their official site. I want to show the full website though, not just a snapshot of the design.

Would I be able to showcase this with subdomains? Say my website's domain is my own name, and 4 other websites are a part of it. Or do I need a hosting account that allows for multiple websites?

[Xanza]

Yes, this would be very simple to setup. You simply need a webhost. I've done dealings with http://servode.com/ before -- they're cheap and have wonderful tech support.

I'm sure they'll help you set it up.

Also, to answer your question, you could simply purchase a domain: http://yourname.com/ and setup your projects under subdomains:

http://project1.yourname.com/
http://project2.yourname.com/

All under the same package that you purchase -- meaning it wouldn't cost you anymore than the price of the hosting package and the domain name itself.

[Jeff K]

Get a good shared hosting account....Hostgator is excellent for support and price. Then you can either create subdomains site1.yourdomain.com, site2.yourdomain.com, etc, or just create directories off your main site like yourdomain.com/site1, yourdomain.com/site2, etc. for each site. Honestly it doesn't really matter how you set it up.

Have a main portfolio page with images that link to each site and maybe info about each project. I'd personally create your main portfolio page with an html5/css3 responsive design that scales and looks good across all types of devices (computers, tablets, phones) as this is what is hot in web design right now.

Good luck!

[Sarah Nilam]

When you want to host a lot of sites, you can find a host that supports multi domain hosting. When you wan to showcase your works, I suggest you will create your main portfolio site(you can use your own domain or subdomain) and create a preview or link to your other projects.

[Justin]

The lower plans at like GoDaddy or DomainDash have the ability to handle what you are needing. Save yourself some money and do the subdomain idea.

[Michael]

Try this promotional offer: http://www.bluehost.com/track/bhwhs/CODE84
For only $4.95 per month you will get a free domain name, you will be able to host unlimited number of websites/domains with only one shared web hosting plan! For example yourwebsite1.com, yourwebsite2.com, yourwebsite3.com and so on. This multiple domains hosting plan allows unlimited number of websites to be hosted and each website is unique independent site. If you have your domains with registrar such as Godaddy, just login to your registrar account and change the domain name server to the following name server, namely:
NS1.Bluehost.com
NS2.Bluehost.com
After that from Web Hosting cPanel control panel, go to add-on domain, and add the new domain name to it. Wait for domain propagation, usually will be ready within a day or two. Here are the steps:
1) Go to cPanel and choose addon domain.
2) Within the addon domain page, enter the new domain name.
3) Verify domain ownership
4) Choose how to assign the domain name, tick the addon domain option.
5) Choose addon directory, the directory to host the new domain files.
6) Click add domain and complete the process.
Once the domain is added to your account, the domain can now be viewed and managed from domain manager tool.