Creating 'vanity' domain names on the fly.

[steve.anon@gmail.com]

Hi - Any help or pointer on this would be greatly appreciated. I'm
working on something similar to blogger.com. Users sign up and they get
their own webpage, with a domain name of 'username.blogg er.com'.

Since blogger.com is doing it on the fly (as you sign up), I'm sure
they are doing it programmaticall y. Anyone has any clue on how they do
that?

TIA,

Steve.

[Allodoxaphobia]

Re: Creating 'vanity' domain names on the fly.

On 9 Jul 2005 02:18:48 -0700, steve.anon@gmai l.com wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi - Any help or pointer on this would be greatly appreciated. I'm
> working on something similar to blogger.com. Users sign up and they get
> their own webpage, with a domain name of 'username.blogg er.com'.
>
> Since blogger.com is doing it on the fly (as you sign up), I'm sure
> they are doing it programmaticall y. Anyone has any clue on how they do
> that?[/color]

That's _not_ a domain name. That is a _server_ name. In your example
it would be the server: username on the network at blogger.com.

How the blogger.com network handles those dymanic server names, then,
is left as an exercise for the student.

Jonesy

[Colin McKinnon]

Re: Creating 'vanity' domain names on the fly.

steve.anon@gmai l.com spilled the following:
[color=blue]
> Hi - Any help or pointer on this would be greatly appreciated. I'm
> working on something similar to blogger.com. Users sign up and they get
> their own webpage, with a domain name of 'username.blogg er.com'.
>
> Since blogger.com is doing it on the fly (as you sign up), I'm sure
> they are doing it programmaticall y. Anyone has any clue on how they do
> that?
>[/color]

I think it's unlikely they bother registering each new signup - more likely
a wildcard domain - then reading the servername back in the CGI code (PHP
can do this).

HTH

C.

[Gordon Burditt]

Re: Creating 'vanity' domain names on the fly.

>Hi - Any help or pointer on this would be greatly appreciated. I'm[color=blue]
>working on something similar to blogger.com. Users sign up and they get
>their own webpage, with a domain name of 'username.blogg er.com'.
>
>Since blogger.com is doing it on the fly (as you sign up), I'm sure
>they are doing it programmaticall y. Anyone has any clue on how they do
>that?[/color]

This isn't a domain, it's a host name.

They probably add an entry to their DNS zone when someone signs up.
This does not require the involvement of a registrar since it's
under an already-registered domain. Generating a DNS zone file out
of a database is not a big deal, especially if they run their own
DNS server. Any program-driven way of modifying their DNS zone
(it's hosted by Google) would also work. Lots of DNS hosting
companies provide web pages to let you add/modify/delete entries.
This could be driven by PHP using CURL or various other methods.

They don't seem to be using a wildcard DNS record, which is ugly
but would also work.

Then, either they add the virtualhost to the Apache config file
(they do use Apache), or they let the CGI/PHP look at the hostname
it was called under, or both.

Gordon L. Burditt