We're looking into DotNetNuke for a project where we need to be able to create subdomains for each "portal".

http://subdomain1.domain.com
http://subdomain2.domain.com
http://subdomain3.domain.com

So far we haven't been able to see that DotNetNuke supports subdomains. If this can be done, please tell me how. This would be a show-stopper for our utilizing DotNetNuke.

Thanks

piece of cake.

Create your portal for domain.com
Create your child portals domain/sub1, domain/sub2 etc.
While logged in as host in each of the child portals go to Admin>Site Settings and find the Portal Alias field and enter in the subdomain - sub1.domain.com, www.sub1.domain.com
Go to IIS and add all of the subdomains to the header information for the domain.com site and your done.

It can be done and is quite simple really.

With one install of dnn you can create any number of portals running off the same codebase and database. Set up your initial site. Log in as host and create your new portals (Host > Portals) as parent portals and set their alias as your subdomain. All done.

I do this on my hosted site at webhost4life

It sure can... this functionality works "out of box".

Just login with the "host" account, go to "Host"-->"Portals". You can create a new portal as a subdomain.

Does the sub-domain have to be set up in advance of creating the parent portal, and could the site be accessed in some ther way before the sub-domain is set up?

Leslie

lol, 3 replies all with same answer.

damn moderated forums

No and Yes.

Having the subdomain available will make it easier but the key thing is to understand the portal alias concept. When you have one install of dnn serving several portals it is the alias that determines which portal a url wil go to. It also allows you to have several different urls going to the same portal as there can be multiple entries in the alias field.

For example, any url (domain) will resolve to an IP address. A subdomain will also resolve to the same IP address. It is up to the website software to sort out the difference and this is how dnn works.

Lets say you have a webserver set up with an install of dnn holding two portals. On portal is for the main site and the second portal (I prefer parent portals but it could be a child portal) is for a subdomain. The server is on ip address 192.0.0.1 (just an example). Domain is myowndomain.com and subdomain is gavin.myowndomain.com.

Now, in the alias for the main site you have the entry www.myowndomain.com. This directs all requests to www.myowndomain.com to the main site. In the alias field for the sub-portal you have www.gavin.myowndomain.com. Therefore, all requests for www.gavin.myowndomain.com get directed to the second or sub-portal. Following along?

Now, remember that both the domain and the subdomain both point to the same ip address? Well, you could put that ip address, 192.0.0.1 in this example, into either of the alias fields depending on which portal you wanted the ip address to go to. This is how you can access the sub-domain site without the subdomain being all set up in dns etc.

To actually set the aliases you can do it in the database (not recommended) in the portals table. Preferably, you can do it through the dnn interface. Log in as host and go to the host > portals tab and set them in there. The format is a comma seperated list with no spaces.

In reality you will usually have two aliases i.e www.myowndomain.com,myowndomain.com so people can use or not use the 'www.' part. Similarly, in the subdomain portal alias you would have www.gavin.myowndomain.com,gavin.myowndomain.com

Just remember that with domains and subdomains they all resolve to the same IP address.

Sorry if this is a big longwinded but I thought a long explaination might help others.

Corrections anyone?

I'm going to make my own correction to start with.

I don't think it would work exactly this same with a dnn child portal as that is created under a subdirectory with it's own default.aspx file. Can someone clarify this?

The sub-domain does not need to be set up in advance of creating the parent portal, and if you create the additional portals as "Child" portals you can access it via mydomain.com/childsite. Once you are ready to roll it out as a true subdomain enter in the correct information into the portal alias fields for the "child" portal. Then make the appropriate changes in IIS.

Good info, thanks.

For truly dynamic portal creation consider adding a wildcard dns entry for your domains.

This way parent portals such as mysub.mydomain.com may be created on the fly with no additional configuration.

Chaps

I have followed this thread with great interest because it is something that I have been trying to do now for a couple of weeks. I abandoned my attempts last week on a sub domain portal and used the bodged solution of pointing a webhost4life sub domain at an asp page that does a redirect to the child portal in dotnetnuke. This was because of errors i was receiving in dnn telling me the application was not started.

This redirect example can be seen at http://newport.ternvalley.org

I have now tried again and followed exactlly the instructions and advice in these messages and still it does not work.

I can only deduce the fact that my parent domain www.ternvalley.org is actually hosted in a sub directory \ternvalley.org and this is causing problems - i have all the aliases setup properly and the sub domain setup fine in webhost4life.

anyone wants to see this the example I am trying to get working is test.ternvalley.org

Eddie

When you navigate to the child portal on the subdomain, http://sub.domain.com, will DNN redirect the user to http://www.domain.com/Default.aspx?tabid=123 or does the user stay at http://sub.domain.com/blahblah?
It is important to us that the user have the illusion of being on the subdomain, our customer doesn't want their customers to realize they've left their site and come to ours. Multiple databases in not an option for our customer either.

if the only alias listing from the portal admin area is sub.domain.com and there are no listings like domain.com/sub there is now way the portal would allow the domain to be resolved.

everything should be completly transparent

Eddie,

I installed dnn in the root of my WH4L account and used their subdomain register form with nothing in the directory field. This works for me. Maybe try moving dnn out of a subdir?!?!