The domain manager for WebpageDomainNames has a confusing way of doing wildcard subdomains. Googling for this there seemed to be a lot of confusion and I eventually found the answer.
Usually you make a CNAME record of * to represent the wildcard subdomain. Instead, with Godaddy make an A record with the name * and set the IP to your server. Strange way of doing it, but it seems to work.
Posted by Arun on June 27, 2009 at 10:26 am
Hi, I tried that – adding an A Record. However when I browse abc.mydomain.com, I get an 404 error. I don’t know what I’m missing. I don’t see a .htacess file on my root folder. I’m using a Windows hosting account
Posted by godavemon on June 27, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Arun,
That sounds very strange. One thought is that it often takes a few hours for the DNS to propagate your new domain settings. Try again and it may be working.
It should not matter that you’re using Windows. This is all about getting Godaddy’s DNS to handle wildcards.
Posted by Arun on June 27, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Thanks Dave,
Yeah it is strange. No matter what subdomain I try, it gives me a 404 error. Its 8 hours now after I made the A Record change. Not sure what path or file it’s trying to access and throwing up a 404 error. Any idea what path is accessed when I type a specific subdomain? For example when I try abc.mydomain.com, does it try accessing mydomain.com/abc.html or something like that?
Posted by godavemon on June 27, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Ah, I see. Your problem is probably on the server end. You can check if the domain name is rendering correctly by doing
ping mydomain.com
ping abc.mydomain.com
and seeing if they both give the same IP.
If they do you have to configure your server a bit differently to read the wildcard urls. If you’re using apache the conf would be something like this
ServerName mydomain.com
ServerAlias *mydomain.com
The ServerAlias parameter (*myapp.com) tells apache to accept any prefix for mydomain.com
Posted by Arun on June 27, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Thanks for the help Dave.
I tried pinging. Everything, the main domain as well as the subdomains, ping to the same IP. I’m using Windows hosting. I tried adding a 404 section to the web.config file and also configured the hosting account on GoDaddy to redirect to a specific page for a 404 error. I still get the same 404 page for subdomains. Any Ideas?
I guess I will have to contact GoDaddy support too. The only thing is that they won’t be as responsive as you.
Posted by godavemon on June 27, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Arun, if they’re all pointing to the same IP then its not GoDaddy’s issue anymore. GoDaddy is routing the name correctly.
Its something on the server end that’s screwed up. You need to now look up how to support wildcard subdomains for whatever server you’re using.
Good luck!
Posted by Film Steak on October 24, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Hi Dave,
Thanks for your inputs here. I also have a similar problem. I’m using GoGaddy as both domain registrar and web host.
I tried to ping the following:
ping filmsteak.com
ping comedy.filmsteak.com
… and they point to the same IP address. My main problem now is how to make the wildcard subdomains work in actual web browsers.
I’m a nOOb in Apache. Can you point me to the right direction? Heck, I’m not even sure if my GoDaddy account is connected to (or running on) Apache.
Posted by godavemon on January 4, 2010 at 6:33 pm
You’ve hopefully found the solution by now, but it lies in the ServerAlias parameter in your apache config
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/core.html#serveralias
In your apache configuration you’ll need your virtualhost to have these parameters
ServerName filmsteak.com
ServerAlias filmsteak.com *.filmsteak.com
…
Posted by Panatlantica on December 22, 2009 at 4:25 am
Confirm this procedure with the unusual * A-record. Actually, GoDaddy.com officially explains this procedure in a help text for installing WordPress MU (a multiuser WordPress-installation that allows for http://username.wordpressmu.com type of user generated subdomains).
See: http://help.godaddy.com/article/5072
Posted by Posts 06/15/2011 | The Gregarious Phat Man on June 14, 2011 at 11:31 pm
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