My questions are:

1. In your experience, wherever you are, do people differentiate from a face-to-face PhD and a distance PhD done mostly online?

Correspondence Courses(by post) are and were looked down on; and now Online Courses carry the same distinction. In fact resulting PhD's are regarded as little more than fake or novelty degrees by serious-minded employers. They may be okay for getting a job teaching English as a foreign Language in Asia; you are certainly not going to end up as the head of a metallurgy department with a novelty correspondence degree. No, bricks&mortar campus-you must attend one of those. That's a thought, how on earth would you study mettallurgy by correspondence or online-the mind boggles?