Using Mulpitle Domains for One Hosting Account

cesarcesar

Hi all,

I want to set up one hosting account and access it via multiple domain names. Each different domain name will server the user slightly different content without the user knowing about the other domains. How do i do this?

Example: User comes to my hosting account via www.siteA.com. The whole time the user is on the site the base URL never changes from www.siteA.com. The user needs to see www.siteA.com/page1.php as so on. (Actually i plan to use ModRewrite to alter the page name, but that comes later.) Now when another user comes to www.siteB.com they need go to the same hosting account and see the site as if they have no clue about www.siteA.com, just with some different content.

Tested: I have tried using a .htaccess Symlink, but this will not work as it just redirects like a 301. Similar with CNAME's at my registrar.

Tested: Frame Forwarding via hosting account. This doesn't work since the forwarded URL doesn't change from the base URL. Meaning, www.siteA.com never changes to www.siteA.com/page1.php. Also any links show the forwarded to's URL in the status bar.

I hope my detail in description has been enough and someone has a great suggestion for me. Thanks much.

CEsar

bpat1434

Are you trying to have the same base code and different database content show up? I've done something like this, you can go to any of the following sites and see custom content; however, they're all hosted under one domain, so they all use the same base code, it's just different content retrieved from the database.

PJEP
ILCPJ
CalAction
WaNet

Now, all we did is use one main website (PJEP) to which we aliased the other domains. We were using Plesk to do this. If you're using cPanel it's the same thing. If you're using Servage.net you'd just define the path of that the domain uses to be the same as the other one. If you're using some other control panel, ask your host about aliasing domains (as it might not be allowed).

Then all the sites see the same content with the exception of what is tailored to them. So updating one site with a feature adds it to all sites.

To see an example of the same content, look at the "Networks" list, it's the same list across all sites; however, the home-page and style changes depending upon the site you're at. I think this took my partner and I a little over a week to work out and perfect. The dynamic design was the hardest part. I had to take around 20 sites and conform them to 1 design, and rework the CSS for each one. So that's why it took us a week. Really this could be done in about 2 or 3 days.

cesarcesar

pbat1434 - YES! this is exactly what i need. I am on Plesk. Can you give me more info on what to do?

bpat1434

Go into your control panel, set up your top domain (in my example, this was PJEP.org). Then go into the PJEP Control Panel. Click on "Domain Aliases". Now add whatever domains you want to also go to that document root.

Now, in your code you can easily look at $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] to see what site is hosting it. We store all the active domains in a database, so we look up data based on the domain ID. But you could just as easily use the actual domain to tie everything together.