Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with subdomain

Why does Apache2 serve a subdomain when given an IP?

your mildly obsessive average geek — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:41:20 -0800

I have a domain hosted on a VPS running CentOS5. Whenever I enter http://my-vps-ip in my browser, I get redirected to http://subdomain.mysite.com. My limited Google-fu is no match for this particular problem, so I'm hoping the folks at AskMeFi can tell me how I should setup Apache so that http://my-vps-ip goes to http://mysite.com and not the subdomain? Extracts from the httpd.conf file:



ServerName mysite.com

...

UseCanonicalName Off

conf file defining the subdomain:



<virtualhost *:80> 

        ServerName      subdomain.mysite.com

        DocumentRoot    /var/www/subdomain

        ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/subdomain_mysite_com-error.log

        CustomLog /var/log/httpd/subdomain_mysite-access.log combined

    <directory> 

        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks

        AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo Indexes Limit

       Order allow,deny

       Allow from all

     </directory> 

< /virtualhost>

Also, FWIW - currently the rDNS lookup on my VPS IP goes to ns1.mysite.com.

Many thanks!

CNAME a domain and delegate the subdomain

qvantamon — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:33:35 -0800

Can I CNAME a second-level domain, and delegate a subdomain to a nameserver? What if the nameserver is the same for both? So here's my problem: I have a page at example.freehost.com, and I want to:
1) Buy domain example.com and forward (www.)example.com to example.freehost.com via CNAME.
2) Buy hosting for a subpart of the site (say, forum.example.com), in a host that uses cPanel (which means I should be able to delegate NS for forum.example.com to them).

The added complication is that I want to buy the domain and the hosting from the same company, which means the nameserver for forum.example.com could end up being the same as the one for example.com

So, in summary I want to have entries like these:

example.com CNAME example.freehost.com
www.example.com CNAME example.freehost.com
forum.example.com NS 1.1.1.1
forum.example.com NS 1.1.1.2

And on 1.1.1.1 & 1.1.1.2, the normal cpanel entries...
forum.example.com A [myhostsip]
forum.example.com MX [myhostsip]
blah blah blah etc etc.

My first question is - Is that a valid configuration (cnaming the second-level and delegating the third level)

My second question is: can I have both entries in 1.1.1.1 & 1.1.1.2 (that is, have the NS entry be a self-reference)?

Or will this self-reference make the internets asplode?

Also, if I can, will I be able to do it by just managing my DNS entries, and asking the hosting guys to put forum.example.com on cPanel, or will this require some black magic in part of the hosts? (which means they probably won't do, since I'm aiming for a cheap host)

Redirecting subdomain to https

The Radish — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:44:44 -0800

I need to redirect all traffic on a subdomain to https instead of http. mod_rewrite is installed, but I don't know how to use it. So for a couple different subdomains I need to force https in other words I want any requests to:

http://sub1.example.com

to go to:
https://sub1.example.com

I found a couple examples online, but I'm not familiar enough with mod_rewrite and .htaccess files enough to make it work. Help, I'm clueless!

Drupal and the missing links.

Null Pointer and the Exceptions — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:48:32 -0800

Drupal: Copying a site to a test site (subdirectory). The links, they go nowhere! So I followed Drupal's Copying your live site to a test site documentation.

My original site is http://foo.com, and my test site is http://foo.com/test/

I've done the following:
- copied the contents of public/ to public/test/
- done an export of the DB, changed the contents of the export so that any reference to foo.com/ now says foo.com/test/ and done an import to a new DB
- I've added public/sites/foo.com.test/setup.php that points to the new db_url and has foo.com/test as a base_url.

I'm able to access the main page of the test site, and when I mouse over a url it will show foo.com/test/example/ but when I click on it, I get a Page Not Found message, but within the drupal theme. Here's the interesting part... in the page not found page, all the links are from the main site, not the test site.

I wonder if .htaccess has something to do with it. I don't know much about it but here's what's in the .htaccess in public/ :

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
# Rewrite current-style URLs of the form 'index.php?q=x'.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
</IfModule>

I should also mention that I'm using clean urls and Drupal 5.5.

Setting up subdomains for a LAN?

unSane — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 07:37:22 -0800

How do I give my computers subdomain names on my local network? For example, mylaptop.mynetwork.com, mydesktop.mynetwork.com, momslaptop.mynetwork.com, kids.mynetwork.com and so on? Do I have to set up some kind of local DNS or is there an easier way to do it in the router? I am not concerned at this point about being able to access the subdomains from the WAN although that would be handy later. It's the LAN I'm interested in. (Obviously I am using Bonjour right now but for I want to use the subdomains too). I own mynetwork.com and it points to a static IP. My LAN router is firewalled behind that. It's a WRT54G running DD-WRT. I have a spare computer I could run DNS on but I'd rather not have to do that. Everything is Macs running OS X, mostly Leopard.

How do you make a subdomain forward to a different host?

tracert — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:07:45 -0800

How do you assign a subdomain to a different host? So, here's an odd situation.

My brother runs a small charity that has a website at www.mybrotherschairty.org. The site is being hosted for free by a friend of his, but we don't have much contact with them, and I'm reluctant to ask them for favours. The domain name is registered with Godaddy, and while I have access to domain management there, I don't have any access to the hosting provider.

I have been asked to set up a Movable Type blog for the site, but I don't have permissions to create a new database on our hosting provider, and I don't want to jam a bunch of tables into the ones we have. Therefore, I have agreed to host the blog at my personal server at www.myserver.net/blog. I have complete control of everything related to my server, including DNS.

Okay, so what I want to do is to have the subdomain blog.mybrotherschairty.org go to myserver.net/blog. But I want to use masking so that the url doesn't change for visitors who will have no idea what myserver.net is. Yesterday, I went to Godaddy and added a subdomain though the interface there. However it's been over 28 hours and nslookup on blog.mybrotherschairty.com still says "no answer", so I think I need to do something else.

This should be pretty easy to do, I think, but I have no idea how DNS works, or what a CNAME record is, or how to bake a delicious pie with said record. Please talk to me like I'm an idiot. What, exactly, should I do to make this work?

Help me feed Drupal!

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:46:05 -0800

Can I obtain RSS feeds from Drupal, on more than just the (root) front page, and with a calendar View? When I create a Page content item, I have the option of promoting it to the front page. This appends the content to previous content on the root of the site. An RSS feed icon at the bottom of the page generates a feed from these Page items.

There is only one front page (that I know of) which sits, again, at the root of the site. I don't have the option of promoting Pages to other nodes.

Let's say I have various "subdomains" with the names "Faculty", "Undergraduate" and "Graduate". For a concrete example, here's the test site on which I'm playing with Drupal.

Is there a way to make these subdomain nodes the equivalent of a root front page, such that when I add Pages, I can choose to "promote" them to an existing node, and then Drupal will make an RSS feed for me from the Pages on a node?

Likewise, I am using the Views module to generate a calendar. Is there a way to automatically generate, say, per-month RSS feeds from calendar content?

I am using the Pathauto module to create human-readable aliases to nodes. I don't know if this complicates anything.

Thanks for any tips!

Can a username redirect to a subdomain?

jmevius — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 09:02:02 -0800

How would I setup a password-protected subdomain where the username is the subdomain? My levels of incompetence will be further explained, as there is I would like to have a series of subdomains setup for password protection, with the username also being the name of the subdomain.

How can I setup a single login screen that takes a given input of username/password and (if a valid username/password combination) redirects to the address http://username.domain.com/?

For what it's worth, I will be using a LAMP-style server and have the ability (but not necessarily the skill) to write .htaccess files.

master of my domain

davidmsc — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:35:58 -0800

If I want to create sub-sites within my main site, which option is better -- and why? Example: suppose I own http://www.domain.com

If I want to let a friend set up his own site on my domain, which of the following options would be smarter/wiser/better?

http://buddy.domain.com
http://www.domain.com/buddy

Any pointers, reasons, etc, greatly appreciated.

Redirecting subdomains with mod_rewrite

subclub — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 16:01:58 -0800

A subdomain redirection question (any mod_rewrite experts?) So let's say that I'm setting up my new site, sports.com. Here is what I'd like to do:

When someone visits http://baseball.sports.com, I would like them to be redirected to http://sports.com/index.php?id=baseball (but transparently, so http://baseball.sports.com still appears in their browser). I would like to do this with several subdomains, but I don't need to handle *.sports.com (my webhost doesn't support wildcarded DNS entries anyway).

I realize I could fake this with frames, but that seems kind of lame. After wading through tons of .htaccess & mod_rewrite info, I'm more confused than ever. Can anyone help me pull this off?

How can other people map their domain names to my subdomains?

subverted — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 13:19:33 -0800

How do you do that thing whereby a person can go to your website and map their domain to a subdirectory of your own website? Do you need to have root on your server to do this or are there easier (read: cheaper) ways to do it?

Good free subdomain hosts?

grabbingsand — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 13:22:55 -0800

A permutation of this question has been asked previously, but I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with free subdomain hosts. I need to run a forum-type (probably YaBBS-based) site for next eight months only, so I don't need a yearly package and I'd prefer to not spend a dime if possible, but I don't want it littered with pop-ups and banners either. Ideas or leads?