Updated: May 4, 2001
This article assumes that
you already looked at Registering
Your Zone File at ZoneEdit.com beforehand. All we are going to
do here is add a subdomain.
You might want a subdomain
for several reasons. You can use it to access a part of your website
faster. For example, www.dslwebserver.com
leads to the main site and you can enter the forums by clicking on the
icon labeled "forums". However, the good people at DSL/Cable Webserver
know that some people want to go directly into the forums without going
through the main site so we created a subdomain called "forums".
This way, you can go into our forums by simply typing in forums.dslwebserver.com.
Pretty cool and handy.
Another reason you might
want to use subdomains is so that you can host somebody's website under
your domain name. Something like this:
-
jack.dslwebserver.com
-
jill.dslwebserver.com
-
jessie.dslwebserver.com
You could set it up so each
of those subdomain + domain names go to each person's website. Very
nifty.
There are two ways we can
setup subdomains. We can set the subdomain to go to:
-
Option 1. The same
IP address as the domain name.
-
Option 2. A different
IP address than the domain name.
Most of us hosting websites
on
DSL or Cable only have 1 IP address so Option 1 is probably more applicable
to us. In order to host subdomains on the same IP address, your webserver
software must be able to host multiple websites on a single IP address.
A list of the operating systems and webserver software that can do this
can be found in Server Software.
After your DNS changes are complete, you must configure your webserver
software to work with subdomains.
In each instance, you must
add a new entry for each additional subdomain.
Here we go:
Go to: www.zoneedit.com
Click on "Login" and type
in your username and password.
If you have multiple zones
hosted with zoneedit.com, select the domain name that you want to edit.
You will then see the main
page for your domain name. It should look something like this.
There are two ways we can
add a subdomain to our domain name. We can either use the "IP addresses
(A)" link or the "Aliases (CNAME)" link. Both methods work, but we
will use the "IP addresses (A)" method because it is more flexible in our
case. This isn't the way zone files are supposed to be written, but
we'll let zoneedit.com worry about that. (That's why these things
are web based and not text based!)
Click on the "IP addresses
(A)" link. You will then see this:
In the bottom box, fill out
your new desired subdomain name in the first box. In the second box,
you can either type in the same IP number as your domain name or you can
type in a different IP number than domain name. Most likely, you
will have only 1 IP address and should type this in the box. A discussion
about this topic is at the beginning of this article if your forgot already.
I'm going to be using the
same IP address as my domain name.
Click on "Add New IP Address".
You will see this confirmatory message. Click "Yes".
Here is the screen that shows
the subdomain listed with the proper IP number. All modifications
have been saved now and the DNS changes should appear almost instantaneously.
When I do a "nslookup forums.dslwebserver.com",
I get the proper answer. I did this nslookup about 2 minutes after
I finished the previous steps. That's fast!
Now that your DNS changes
are done, you must go and configure your webserver software to handle this
new subdomain, otherwise, your visitors will simply get an error message
when they try to use the new subdomain.
The error will look like
this:
This is what it looks like
when the webserver is configured correctly.
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