"fake" subdomains

**Smo** · 09-10-2005, 03:58 AM

Holah,
Is it possible to make "fake" subdomains so that when you load tehSub.yoursite.com it actually just goes to for instance www.yoursite.com/filename.php?var=tehSub. right now if i try to load sub.mysite.com FF gives a "could not be found" message.

I'd asume that there is some .htaccess tweekage to be done to get this to work, but I have no idea what.

**Smo** · 09-10-2005, 04:12 AM

I tested on VinDSLs page and it works there.

http://blabla.lenon.com works
http://blabla.killboredom.com doesn't

(lenon.com was the only Jaguar hosted site I could think off -.-)

**Vin DSL** · 09-10-2005, 04:16 AM

Sure! You can do anything with .htaccess, given enough time and effort...

**Vin DSL** · 09-10-2005, 04:22 AM

Originally Posted by Smo

I tested on VinDSLs page and it works there.

http://blabla.lenon.com works...

Heh! Try it now...

**Smo** · 09-10-2005, 04:27 AM

Hehe

Now the question is what do I add to .htaccess so that it'll redirrect instead of block. The php part of checking the subdomain and using it as a variable I can do, but I've never done much .htaccess editing.

**Vin DSL** · 09-10-2005, 04:39 AM

Yeah, .htaccess is kinda funny. It like losing weight...

Everyone knows how to lose weight, right? It's very simple! Ask anyone and they can tell you. However, losing weight is very hard. It's very simple, but very hard -- .htaccess is the same thing -- easy but hard.

OMG! I'm starting to sound like Richard Simmons...

**jason** · 09-10-2005, 09:14 AM

The "not found" message is coming from the DNS system, not from Apache. When you make a request for a domain name, your computers DNS resolver kicks in and tries to look up that specific name (blabla.killboredom.com). If it can't find that specific name somewhere in the DNS system, it'll return an error, and that is wht you are seeing right now.

To get around this, you need to do one of two things. You can either set up a new "A" record (a DNS Address record) for every "fake" subdomain you wnt to use, or you can set up a wildcard record. The wildcard works much like the email catch all: when a request comes in to the DNS server, the server goes through your zone record searching for the requested name. If it comes to a "*" in the list of addresses it stops and sends back the IP address associated with it.

Since you only have one IP address, shared by each subdomain on your site, your main site, and possibly everyone else on the server as well, Apache needs to do some work as well. Once the IP address is found, the browser's request is sent to the server. A "host" variable is sent along, specifying which specific host name was requested. Apache scans its list of sites looking for that name. If it is found, it serves up the proper page. If not it goes through a similar process of sending you to a default site. Once you get to that default site you .htaccess rules will kick in and you cna use mod_rewrite to manipulate the URL.

The rewrite would be something like this (not tested):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^tehsub\.yoursite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.yoursite.com/filename.php?var=tehsub [QSA,R,L]

In this example, the subdomain would be redirected to filename.php every time, regardless of the path you entered after the filename. Replacing filename.php with $1 will cause you to keep the path as is, but redirect to the www domain and attach "tehsub" as a variable. (this would probably be overkill as you can find the host name used through PHP with $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']). You could also set your RewriteRule to http://www.yoursite.com/tehsub/$1, which would cause the server to look for the files in the "tehsub" directory, essentially doing the same thing as a real subdirectory.

Hope this helps.

--Jason

**Smo** · 09-10-2005, 10:29 AM

To get around this, you need to do one of two things. You can either set up a new "A" record (a DNS Address record) for every "fake" subdomain you wnt to use, or you can set up a wildcard record. The wildcard works much like the email catch all: when a request comes in to the DNS server, the server goes through your zone record searching for the requested name. If it comes to a "*" in the list of addresses it stops and sends back the IP address associated with it.

Thanks for the reply, it makes sence, but..

As a true DNS & .htaccess n00b, I'd need some more exact help with that wildcard part. Where do I put the '*' wildcard and in what form. (I use aletianic)

The .htaccess I can figure out based on the example you gave me, and google.

**jason** · 09-10-2005, 10:44 AM

Sorry, about that...I forgot to mention that you'll need to contact support for DNS chagnes. You don't have access to the DNS settings.

--Jason

**Smo** · 09-10-2005, 10:54 AM

Heh, np, thanks for the help

**Galen** · 09-10-2005, 01:02 PM

This is very easy and Jason had it right already. I use .htaccess to give subdomains to my multihosted domains (since they can't have "real" subdomains). This code is tested and works:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .*subdomain.doman\.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/path_to/directory/for_subdomain/
RewriteRule (.*) /path_to/directory/for_subdomain/$1

That would make any request for subdomain.domain.com go to domain.com/subdomain/ and it will be transparent to the end user.

Hope that helps, good luck

**Vin DSL** · 09-10-2005, 03:01 PM

Originally Posted by Smo

The .htaccess I can figure out based on the example you gave me, and google.

Since you're interested in this kinda stuff, here's a cute 'example' for you. Maybe it'll give you some ideas, for future reference...

I recently found out my registrar had given me a free '.info' TLD, so I used it to test the multi-hosted domain feature here on JagPC. The way it used to be, you had to contact Tech Support to get these multi-hosted domains setup. Now, you can do it yourself via cPanel.

Everything worked great, but because multi-hosted domains set inside subdomains, you could call up the URL many different ways -- and it looked rather amateur-ish, IMHO. Besides that, I knew those damn search bots would find every one of them... So, I used .htaccess to force all calls to the TLD.

Here's .htaccess file I use in my multi-hosted directory...

Code:

# $Author: VinDSL (Lenon.com) $
# $Date: 2005/09/10 15:27:43 $

#Don't inherit parent '.htaccess' config
RewriteEngine on

#Redirect all multi-hosted 'lenon.info' permutations to http://lenon.info/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^info\.lenon\.com$                    [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^info\.lenon\.com$                      [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.lenon\.info$                      [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^69.73.147.61$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://lenon.info/$1                          [R=301,L]

#Failsafe
Redirect 301 /info  http://lenon.info

Give it a try:

Did I miss any?

**Smo** · 09-10-2005, 11:13 PM

hmm, is the one with the IP address supposed to go to "Requested URL Not Found"?

I'll start testing this after some proper sleep -.- I also have a multi-hosted domain (killboredom.net) but haven't taken it in use properly yet.

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