Dynamically create new website

tbobker

Have you ever seen myspace.com and diydating.com, well i want to use the same idea as they have by means of dynamically creating a website / webspace but beable to assign a sub domain to the user that is essentially a username.

How are these sites done, a low down on how to put something like this together would be helpful.

FatalError

So your question is how to assign the sub-domain? Well, if you are running on Apache (don't know about other servers), there are two main ways to do it:

Have an email be sent to you when the user signs up, then manually configure the sub-domain.
Have a PHP script that updates your httpd.conf file through fopen(), fwrite(), and fclose().

I prefer the second method, since it is automatic and doesn't require any manual configuration. However, this is dangerous, because one mistake could screw up the httpd.conf file and the server, so if you are going to do that, I EXTREMELY recommend testing the script on a different file first, before you put it into action. Also, you should regularly make back-ups of the file in case something happens.

If you are worried about any of this, I suggest using the first method, as it is a lot safer and more reliable, since it's harder for you to screw something up yourself, rather than through a bug in your script.

tbobker

Yes, i have heard about using the httpd.conf file. What actually is the httpd.conf and what does it do?

scrupul0us

its the config file for the apache web server... contains all the options and directives by which the server runs

google for apache and read the documentation

tbobker

thanks.

etully

It would be outrageously dangerous to be modifying DNS info and/or Apache config scripts based on user data. Not to mention the fact that you'd have to restart Apache and Named after each new user was created. And there's no reason to do it.

All you have to do is put in a single wildcard into your DNS for *.yourdomain.com
Then have Apache point every subdomain to the same directory.
Then write a PHP script that checks the environment variables to see which domain was used to reach the page and build the page accordingly. For example:

<?
$domain = $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];
ereg("(.+).yourdomain.com",$domain,$regs);
$username = $regs[1];

open database
find details about username
display page customized for username
?>

MarkR

You can also investigate wildcard DNS and mass virtual hosting in Apache - that way you can dynamically create new virtual hosts without changing either the DNS or Apache's config - just create the directory, put files in, and they will be served.

Mark

tbobker

thanks you have been a great help