How can I let my users create sub domains?

[xanthus]

Hi,

I want to let my site visitors create a sub domain for themselves.

Like www.noniland.com. there you enter your name abc.

and you get a url - abc.noniland.com

can somebody please tell me what is involved for this kind of feature

thanks
xanthus

[bakedjake]

We'll, you'd need some sort of script that would create the DNS namespace in your DNS config files, and then created webspace for them.

You could do one of two things for the webspace: If they already have home directories, the mod_rewrite cookbook has an example to map subdomains to home directories transparently, which would save you a step. If not, you'd have to create the webspace on the fly.

There are already several DNS update scripts out there; you'll want to Google on it for your particular DNS platform. To do all of this, you'd have to be in control of your DNS servers, of course; if your provider manages them for you, it would be very difficult.

Other than that, it'd be hard to give specifics, as this is a heck of a lot of work to setup. But it can be done, for sure!