> I want to set up a site so that anyone can create
> their own custom site URL in the form of
> MY_CUSTOM_NAME.ourdomain.com. In other words, I want
> to be able to take any incoming URL that ends with
> ourdomain.com and send it to a template that looks at
> the machine name portion of the URL and redirects it
> to the appropriate place depending on the first part
> of the URL. The idea is to allow people make a
> website for their company without me having to go into
> Internet Information Server for each new account and
> create a virtual directory for that account.
>
> So the questions are:
>
> 1) Is it a matter of a DNS entry to make it so that
> ANYTHING.ourdomain.com will always be directed to the
> same template? If not, how can this be done?
>
> 2) Are there any problems I should be aware of with
> doing it this way?
>
> I plan to write a small ColdFusion script that will
> then parse the URL and handle the rest from there.
The MY_CUSTOM_NAME portion of your URL is called the host name. You'll need
a DNS entry for each host name, and that entry will have to point to a
specific IP address (an A record, in DNS parlance), or to an alias that
itself points to an IP address (a CNAME record). If you point multiple host
names to the same location, your web server will require the browser to send
the host header name to point to a specific directory, or you could have the
script you mention redirect the user to the appropriate location.
In either case, setting up additional virtual servers in IIS won't be the
hard part, given the number of utilities that exist for just that purpose,
such as Lewis Sellers' set of CFX tags. Changing the DNS entries, on the
other hand, might be more difficult, depending on what DNS server you're
using, how it's set up, and whether you can access it from your web server.
Most DNS servers use text files to store DNS entries, and most will probably
require that you edit the text files to add the changes you want; they may
also require a restart if they provide their own interface for managing DNS
records.
Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software
http://www.figleaf.com/
voice: (202) 797-5496
fax: (202) 797-5444
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