subdomains

[mrteach12]

Alright so I've searched and can't seem to find an answer.

I was wondering if I was going to use a subdomain do I have to have all the files in the www directory or can I use other directories? If so how?

example 1:
wordpress.domain.com /var/www/wordpress/
wiki.domain.com /var/www/wiki/
domain.com /var/www/

example 2:
/var/wordpress/
/var/wiki/
/var/www/

Also is there any guides I can use to install both a wiki and wordpress? And is there a way to auto-backup my site every x days?

[lisati]

You don't have to have all your files sitting in the /var/www directory. One option is be to use virtualhosts.

I'm calling it a night; if you have further questions, someone else might be able to step in.

[mrteach12]

Thanks,
I did try the apache2 thing. It didn't work. Do I need to change something in my 'netfirms' account to set up the subdomains or can it all be done via ubuntu?

Also I was just playing around and it seems like my links show the ipaddress rather then the domain
e.g. www.domain.com with a link to /files/abc.html
it shows 111.222.333.444/files/abc.html instead of domain.com/files/abc.html (the url itself does not change however in the browser url bar it stays domain.com)

I also cannot access any subdirectories by typing domain.com/files/abc.html, if gives me a page not found but using the ip instead works.

In netfirms I'm pointing to my ip address in stealth mode. Not sure if thats what I'm suppose to do.

[PartisanEntity]

Have you checked what you have listed under ServerName under /etc/apache2/sites-available/* ?

[Lars Noodén]

Each subdomain needs its own virtual host configuration. They go under /etc/apache2/sites-available/ with one file per vhost. What you are looking to do is set up name-based virtual hosts. Remember that each new vhost needs to be enabled (a2ensite) before it can actually be used. That only needs to be done once. When you make changes to the vhost configurations, for the changes to take effect. That has to be done any time you make changes.

As to where they go, I'd consider a variant of example 1:

wordpress.domain.com /var/www/wordpress/
wiki.domain.com /var/www/wiki/
domain.com /var/www/domain/

[SeijiSensei]

Have you read this part of the Ubuntu Server Guide? How about this and this from the Apache documentation?

[mrteach12]

Yes I have done those things (enabled using a2ensite and have reloaded). Perhaps my vhost is wrong
this is what I have right now for the wordpress one (I have activated it). I get forbidden when I try it. wordpress.domain.com.

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName wordpress.domain.com
ServerAlias wordpress.domain.com
DocumentRoot /var/wordpress
</VirtualHost>
<Directory /var/wordpress/>
Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

My Default is this

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn

CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

[mrteach12]

I did try changing the default to the wordpress directory and it worked (www.domain.com) went to the wordpress directory. I changed it back.

I'm thinking it might be something with my domain... This was my first domain purchase, but I am assuming all I need to do from the domain purchase site is point it to the ip of my host?

I'm wondering why the links show up as [ip]/images/hello.jpg instead of www.domain.com/images/hello.jpg

[mrteach12]

Seems like default is handling all the connections if I try asfasd.domain.com it uses the default and not my wordpress [site-avaliable] (vhost)

[brent1975]

Hello, Bellow is my notes that I have on my forums when I need to create sub-domains Feel free to take a look on your own. Click Here

Hope this helps!!!

sub-domains is a good way to organize your website. example.com is what we will call the parent domain. You could have many different parts to your website. For example you could have forums, books, music, really anything. so instead of having all your components to your website lay in the same directory /var/www you could go a step further and organize it. Here is an example of how you could structure /var/www using sub-domains

/var/www/example.com { Main domain }
/var/www/forums { forums }
/var/www/music {if you have a music site or streaming}
/var/www/books { digital books site}



By using this type of structure to set up sub-domains all your website components eg: forums, music, books wont have to all be in the root directory of the website. Do you like www.example.com/forums? or would you rather see forums.example.com?

Here is how we accomplish this.

We need to navigate to
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/


Now we are going to create our sub-domain file.
sudo nano forums.example.com



We will use a virtual host here is what it will look like.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName forums.example.com
ServerAlias www.forums.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/forums/
</VirtualHost>
<Directory /var/www/forums/>
Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>



Next we will need to enable the site with apache2.
sudo a2ensite forums.example.com


Now we need to reload apache for the changes to take place.
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Now all you need to do is create a folder in /var/www called forums eg; /var/www/forums

In order for you to be able to access the forums.example.com you will need to modify DNS and add an A record. You Can go to the registar where you got the domain and register the sub-domain and point it to your server, you could use a third party dns such as zoneedit to handle all your dns needs for your domain