> What are some other ways of looking at this?

Every person is going to make their own decision, but the amount of information and research each person employs in making that decision varies.

Saying that, I'd also consider additional factors like -

• is the server multi-homed, and does this affect issues in laying out sites
• does one layout or another help or hinder issues like deployment, redeployment, testing, etc
• does a chosen layout help segregate things that should be segregated, and collate things that should be collated

I admit, these issues are 'smaller' than what you have already raised, but they are important (well, to me at least)

I dont have any real answers, I tend to build web apps, not 'traditional' web sites, so my issues, I feel, are different to yours.

Also, I know I dont have good deployment policies, so I wont share them here ;-)