I have a domain that I think would be the perfect base domain for multiple websites. What I want to do is branch it off into several different subdomains keeping that base domain in the URL. I want to treat each subdomain as a seperate site, but was wondering how would this affect the site being that all of the sites will be interlinked as they all pertain to the same basic subject. I do not want to get penalized because they are all on the same IP and branch from the same domain. they will all have there own link exchanges and what not, but as I said before I don't want to go through the hassle of having to find individual names for each site. Would it be a bad idea to branch all the sites from one domain into multiple subs?
It's fine to do that. Look at digitalpoint.com and forums.digitalpoint.com. Both have different, but good PRs. Same with all the xyz.blogspot.com sites.
I suggest that you designate a different IP/s for the subdomains. If you have access to your server's root then you may be able to do this. Just in case you'l need and to be sure
I do have access to the roots server, but I only have 4 IPs assigned to me. Should I try to purchase more or just put multiple domains on the same IP, but distribute them evenly?
The ip's aren't going to matter really. Google and the other search engines don't care about ip's as much as some people would have you believe. I wouldn't worry about it. Just setup the site and the sub domains as you normally would and build the content for each.