[Resolved] auto-creating subdomains?

leatherback

Hi,

I am working on building a cummunity site where user aot can have their own domain at some obscure free-hosting server, but have a subdomain at mine.

I would like to automate the process of creating subdomains. So if somebody registers their username, the script generates the username.mydomain.net subdomain, and links it to their website. I have no clue in which direction to think about doing this..

I would like to keep this subdomain visible in the addressbar. I am thinking using a 0/100% frame for the last part, but am open for suggestions.

Anybody any ideas on how-to go about this:

Create the subdomain
Keep it visible after the user is forwarded

Any idea is appreciated!

LordShryku

Some good articles came up from googling it. Main thing will be to find a script to update your DNS entries.

AstroTeg

To keep it visible, you're going to have to do the 0%/100% frame trick.

My one thought would be to use a name server, but then I was thinking... In theory, I bet you could use mod_rewrite & an .htaccess file (which would be pretty easy to keep updated) and check the first part of the URL. If its anything but www, mail, ftp (or whatever) then have it sent to the PHP file you dedicate to setting up the frames. Once the frames are all set, I think you're done (since the 2nd frame will load the 2nd web site's files).

AstroTeg

Oops - I was thinking about this some more. My last idea won't work on its own. I think you'd have to have something like: www.[user subdomain].[your domain name].com - this doesn't do what you advertised.

leatherback

Hi Astro, thx for your reply.

LordShryKu, thx for pointing that out to me but eh..
I am on the edge of my knowledge here.. Could you perhaps explain a bit how this would work on a server? What would happen if I type mysub.mydomain.com? Does it send a resuest to the server at which mydomain.com is hosted? And then what?

Or is this something dependent on the server? Shoud I get some info from them, how they have set it up?
I can easily make subdomains on their server, but manually. they are in effect straight away, so I doubt they update DNS entries..?

Thanx?

AstroTeg

What's happening is you're updating the local name server that is managing your web site.

Let's see if I can map this out and have it make sense...

User makes a request for mysub.rsbauer.com (my site - this subdomain doesn't exist)
|
DNS looks up .com
|
DNS resolves .com and looks up rsbauer
|
DNS finds rsbauer.com resolves to IP address
|
Request is forwarded to the IP address and the domain must then be resolved locally (assuming the web server is doing something like virtual hosting). At this point, the name server will check the in bound domain and tries to find a match. If a match exists (or a DNS record for the match exists), it will pass the request off to the service that was specified in the record.

But don't quote me on that. Its taken me several years to get to this point of understanding and I may not have gotten it all correctly. But basically, it will resolve the top level domain name, and then if you have a local name server, it will check if that subdomain exists. If it does, then life is good. If not, then the server responds with something like the domain doesn't exist.

I had seen an article on the method I attempted to describe up above. Let me see if I can find it again. The beauty about was that it was simple to implement and maintain.

LordShryku

Here's a good article explaining subdomains. Similar to what AstroTeg said, a subdomain is internally mapped on your domain. So anything.yoursite.com will always look at yoursite.com, then go to the server to find out where to look for the anything portion.

AstroTeg

This isn't the same article I was thinking of, but it appears to do the same job:

http://faq.solutionscripts.com/docs/homefree/tips/subdomains.html

For what you're doing, you wouldn't need to be overly complex with your mod_rewrite rules since you just need to look for a subdomain request and then pass it on to one PHP file which sets up the frames. But I'm not sure I'm sold on this working for you, but its something you can check out...

AstroTeg

Another trick you COULD do is use Curl to interface directly with the form that allows you to define new subdomains. All curl would have to do is issue probably a POST request to that form and maybe listen for the HTML response so it can repeat it to you so you can see if the form submitted successfully or not. I'd predict about 10 lines of code depending on how bare you want it but probably an hour or so of troubleshooting and reverse engineering the form (depends on how many hidden variables you have to reproduce, etc). This is an option though...

leatherback

Ok guys,

THx so much for the info. I think I can get tw-hacking on this one, and see wether I can get it going.

Once i am stuck I'll get back to you guys!

I like the idea of reverse-engineering the form, but since that is on a secure part of the server I doubt they'll like me if I do that..

But this definately it going to ge tme going!

Cheers,

AstroTeg

🙂 When it comes to Curl, nothing is unaccessible.

I've used Curl to get past server authentication. I've used curl to log into a vBulletin site and keep track of its cookies. Its pretty slick what you can do with it.

If its server authenitication, thats pretty easy since you can include your user name and password in the URL requests (so technically, you don't need to log in - the browser always sends your credentials even after you log in, so you'd just be doing the same with curl but by-passing the login prompts).