I also had each subdomain set up through http://url.jpope.org/kk as an A record and have moved them to being CNAME records. (was a topic that was brought up on SN, sounded like a good idea) Seems that should ease up the load for ddclient when it checks/updates the IP as needed. (also, #notetoself, go bump the TTL up on those CNAME records as they are all propagating properly.)
All in all, still learning different ways to run a webserver is fun. I can’t say that I have (or currently even know) a proper setup. Maybe some day I’ll learn that as well. :-)