sub domains - how do I create and develop them?

looking for a kick start with the world of sub-domains

[alcotral]

Newbie alert!

I have used subdomains like everyone else, but haven't been on the other side of the fence, creating and maintaining them. I haven't the first idea how to go about this! I use GoDaddy in the main to host my domains, and use others too. Do I speak to them to create subdomains, or it is already more under my own control than that? What are the costs associated, and the technical implications?

OK, several questions, and probably rather stupid ones too, but I just need some help to start helping myself.

tia for your help.

Best regards,

[max_rk]

Its all up to your hosting provider. For sub domain you have to set record A with DNS server. And then configure web server as it would be normal domain.

That’s all to it.

As I say, it all depends whatever you have this option with the host.

[BjarneDM]

If all of the subdomains are hosted on the same server, you don't have to set separate A-records for each subdomain. The HTTP 1.1 protocol requires the browser to send a host-field when requesting a page, and the server can then serve the appropriate page based upon the host-field.

Now, how do one the set this up?
It's a two-step process. You've already acquired the domain, and is the also the 'owner' of all the subdomains. You'll have to set up an A-record that send each and every subdomain no matter what it is to the same IP-number. Usually this i called a *-record.

On the server you set up a virtual server for each sub-domain, and a default where all misspellings etc get caught.

[rossH]

alcotral

If you look through Godaddy's FAQ you can find out all you need there, be sure to search for sub-domain with the hyphen.

If they're hosting a domain for you, where you actually have Web space, then you can create a subdirectory to put a portion of your website content in and create a subdomain in their "manage domains" interface that maps to that subdirectory.

You can also use their DNS interface to create a subdomain that doesn't go to any part of your existing domain, you can point it to another domain or IP completely. It looks to me that you can "mask" this, but I haven't done it so I'm not sure. You'll have to go through it and find out.

Subdomains are a free service with each domain they register.

If you have some SEO end in view here, you should continue searching here for how search engines handle subdomains, and also having domains hosted on unique IPs.

And be aware that as far as I can tell, any parked domains pointed by Godaddy's DNS management will resolve in a reverse-IP lookup to a Godaddy IP shared with over a million other domains.

[fav web master]

As far as I know the Option for subdomain creation can be given by any hosting service provider through there control panel
as I have a control panel from an Indian provider which allows me to create a subdomain and at teh same time allocate seprate ftp username and password for the same as well as web space

Regards,
Pravin