We operate in the 'replicated hosting' environment... we setup mini-sites for clients that run on a 'username' type of setup: Example: site.com/joeschmo site.com/jsmith site.com/susie They frequently want to use their own domain with their site, so we tell them to get a domain and forward it to their site, however this isn't ideal. We'd love to be able to have them go register a domain, set the nameservers to our dedicated server, set something up in their replicated site control panel and then have their site start working with their own domain name all without our interaction. Our dedicated server is Debian/Plesk Our site is coded in PHP/Symfony/MySQL We have several hundred clients, so something automated is essential. Thanks again! -Mark
You can't serve random domains without your interaction: your webserver must know which local script to do the URL rewrite to. But you can write rewrite rule to serve domains like this: www.joeschmo.com -> site.com/joeschmo.com www.jsmith.com -> site.com/jsmith.com www.susie.com -> site.com/susie.com That would require that your client username is the same as client global domain name.
Seems to me when you add an alisas it's just writing to a config file someplace... shouldn't it be possible to automate this? When you create a low-cost hosting account, I doubt someone is manually rewriting config files, but I could be wrong. How does a web host edit their virtual hosts file?
Web hosts have their configurations in SQL database and scripts that manage it. It's usually a feature of control panel. Doesn't Plesk have this ? It should. But it's not "without interaction", as you said: it will still require you to log in to control panel and enter your client's domain name.
Great point... I really don't know that much about plesk, but this is definitely worth looking into. My plan was to have the clients enter in their domain information during setup, and then automate the alias and the redirect with scripts. Thanks for the ideas!