I'm wondering if this is possible and I'm not sure that it is. Before I explain, I found one other post [here]: Separate Domain Registrar and Host, possible to use CDN? which sounds similar to my problem, but I specifically don't want to point the Name Servers away. I only mention this because my question is going to sound very similar.
So I'm trying to help a friend who has a Domain Name registered on Site A (let's assume it's a place like Wix). He also has a hosting package on Site B (to have cpanel access for a site he had built with HTML & PHP).
for example:
1. www.yourdomain.com is hosted on Wix with a template website
2. "database" is a cpanel folder on Site B
Is there a way to have www.yourdomain.com/database link to the "database" folder on Site B's hosting -- without changing the Name Servers?
I don’t believe you can point a directory to a completely different server or hosting package.
However creating a sub domain instead could be your answer.
Is there anything stopping you from using database.yourdomain.com and creating an A record for this in your domain registrar and point it to the hosting package of database?
My client owns "domain.com". We need to give various applications friendly names for internal and external access. The applications are WCF web services and MVC web applications with varying levels of authentication (Windows auth within and across AD domains and plain text authentication). It looks a little like this:
UAT Environment
service1.uat.services.domain.com
service2.uat.services.domain.com
service3.uat.services.domain.com
service4.uat.services.domain.com
application1.uat.apps.domain.com
application2.uat.apps.domain.com
Production Environment
service1.services.domain.com
service2.services.domain.com
service3.services.domain.com
service4.services.domain.com
application1.apps.domain.com
application2.apps.domain.com
We're likely to have a LOT more sub domains, and everything needs to be secured with SSL.
We've changed our minds on how to configure this a number of times, but now we've hit a possible restriction. We thought a wildcard SSL certificate might work, but apparently they only work to a single level of subdomain i.e. *.services.domain.com.
Because of budget, we'd like to register a single wildcard SSL certificate and apply it to multiple servers (belonging to multiple AD Domains, and also a few servers in our DMZ).
This morning I had an idea, but I don't know enough about this stuff to make a definite decision. Do any of you foresee any restrictions on using the following naming convention instead of the above?
service1-uat-services.domain.com
service2-uat-services.domain.com
service3-uat-services.domain.com
service4-uat-services.domain.com
application1-uat-apps.domain.com
application2-uat-apps.domain.com
service1-services.domain.com
service2-services.domain.com
service3-services.domain.com
service4-services.domain.com
application1-apps.domain.com
application2-apps.domain.com
That way, we can register a wildcard for *.domain.com and use a single level subdomain for each application / service, but still allow us to keep everything logically separate. Are there any technical issues anyone can identify using this set up?
There shouldn't be any problem with that.
37signals is a web app company. Some of their applications:
basecamp, to manage projects
highrise, to manage contacts
backpack, like a wiki
they use different domains for each application (basecamphq.com, highrisehq.com, etc)
in basecamp, this is the address of a particular comment for a post in a project of my company (acme) https://acme.basecamphq.com/projects/431678/posts/2964581/comments#5854236
if 37signals had chosen to host all the applications under their domain using folders (eg 37signals.com/basecamp/..., how would you design the paths RESTfully?
Um, how about something like
http://www.37signals.com/[PRODUCTNAME]/projects/431678/posts/2964581/comments#5854236
Not quite sure what you're asking, really.
I want to create a web application that allows users to sign up, register a domain name and create their own website. This will be done in Ubuntu 9.10, Apache 2, Mysql 5 and Php 5.
At the moment, the only area of development I'm uncertain about is the domain name registration and mapping it to the web application.
I'm going to postpone developing the web interface that lets users register domains because I don't have the slightest idea how to do it. For the time being, I'll let an employee register the domain name on the user's behalf. I'll automate the process in te future (any advice on this matter would be appreciated). The employee will also input the registered domain name into my CMS, which will also update the Apache VirtualHost files with new domain information. I will have a cron job reload Apache every 5 minutes to capture the virtualhost changes.
Does this sound like the right approach? Will what I'm about to do be very disruptive to the server? Can anyone offer suggestions or point out issues I need to be aware of?
Additional details
the documentroot will remain the same at /var/www/public_html/websitemaker/ for all domains. I'll track user settings and styles based on the PHP's $_SERVER variable
I don't believe restarting apache every 5 minutes is the way to go as it won't be good for scaling.
One option would be to use logic grab the the domain name used to access the site. Verify that against your list of accounts in MySQL. If there is a match then load the users site and if not then behave like normal or send to error page.
As for registering domain names you will need to create (or use and existing) a script implenting an API to the registrar of your choice. They will provide the ability to check if a domain is available or not and to register it assigning it specific DNS values (plus other options as well) all in real time.
I think what you're looking for is Apache with mass virtual hosting so that you don't have to restart/reload Apache every 5 mins. Any specific questions about this would be more appropriate for Serverfault.
I have a classifieds site and I want to know whether creating subdomains or sub-folders is better, as I am in state of confusion.
If we need to take sub-domains then what are the benefits which we can get from sub-domains?
If we need to take sub-folders then what are the benefits we can get from them?
If we create sub-domains then Google considers sub-domains as individual domains and would show only 2 results per page.
So please clear my doubts and let me know which one is better.
Search engines will treat subdomains more like separate domains, so it many cases using sub-folders is the way to go, so that you are not spreading yourself to thin.
using both is a bad idea, as search engines will try to index both, and one will get flagged as duplicate content.
Here's an article from SEOMoz explaining it in more detail:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites
Personally, I go off the logic that a subdomain is a different application / site owned by the same company. A subfolder is part of the same application / site.
It is probably better for your PageRank / search engine listings if you have 'one-big-site', rather than lots of different loosely coupled domains. If the content of the sites is distinctly different, e.g. a personal site might have a gallery or blog subdomain which keeps the content distinctly seperate from the main site - then it probably makes sense for a subdomain, otherwise, I'd stick with folders.
p.s. Side note, dunno if this is important, but web-browsers only open two connections at once to a website when downloading the different files that constitute a page. So there is a reason for a subdomain in this instance where it actively speeds up (though, on a fast site, minimally) the page load time.
It depends on what content you want to create subfolder/-domains for.
Is it related to your original site? Then you should definitely use sub-folder as this belongs to the same domain. It's much better for the link juice to spread if you use sub folders.
As for the PageRank, it's better to use subfolders.
Subdomains is considered as a new site. Subfolders is not, and will get better rankings if your original site is powerful.
You can use both subdomains and subfolders if you like, but don't forget to use the canonical-tag to avoid duplicate content.
Two relevant links that explains this further:
http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/when-to-use-subdomains-vs-subfolders
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/subdomains-or-subfolders-which-are-better-for-seo/6849/
Why not both? Have demandb.com/foo and foo.demandb.com go to the same place.
Technically, a subdomain is a different server. The company I work for has a domain with several subdomains where every subdomain is located on a different (virtual or real) computer/server. That way, if one of them crashes, the rest just keeps running.
From a developer's perspective, a subdomain would force everything within the subdomain to be a different application while in a subfolder, the subfolder and subsubfolders could be part of the application in the root folder. When I create web applications, those web applications are often tested first on a test server in a subfolder. Once they make it through the tests, they are moved to the root of their own subdomain.
When two subfolders are related to one another, they're often part of the same application, thus it would be better to keep them in their own subfolder so they can share cookies and sessions more easily.
2 comments:
Use sub folders if you need SSL- then you only need 1 basic certificate for the root
If you use both, make sure you redirect 301 one to the other. That will avoid the search engine duplication issue, but would still be problematic for SSL in certain situations.
If your site can be easily partitioned by the subdomains and each subdomain can operate independently then do it! You can then easily scale out your application by deploying different servers(or clusters) for each subdomain.
Examples:
Craigslist: by region(seattle.craigslist.org, sfbay.craigslist.org, etc)
Livejournal: by community/user
Technically, you can do this with folders, but it requires a web proxy farm, whereas subdomains can be done with simple DNS entries.
its also depends on your needs whether u want separate login system for sub domains, because it wont be possible is you are using sub-folder. Sub-folder share same session.
For sub domains you have to set shared cookie for all domains.