Ask HN: What domain provider do you recommend for unlimited sub-domains?

3 pointstim_nuwin11y ago6 comments

I currently use namecheap, but they have a limit of 50 or so subdomains.. I'm looking for a domain provider with an API that I can tie in w/ generating the sub-domain so when a company signs up for my service, they'll get a url like.. (http://customcompany.taskfort.com)

6 comments

med00d11y ago

You're looking for a DNS host. Amazon's route 53 is a good choice.

Alternatively, you could use wildcard DNS and programmatically determine the host header value to direct the user to the correct place. For example, in PHP that information would be available by using $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].

mod11y ago

The latter is what you want here, most likely.

tim_nuwinOP11y ago

Ah yes, this is exactly what I needed. I did not know that you could do that until today. Thanks! Do you know if it's possible to exclude domains part of the wildcard in nginx (e.g. blog.mysite.com or forum.mysite.com):

http://kbeezie.com/wildcard-subdomains-php/

1 more reply

sideproject11y ago

Our company (http://www.postatic.com) provides a tool to create online communities.

When a user creates a community, they automatically get a sub-domain.

We do this by wildcard sub-domain.

Then you pick it up in the Apache conf file.

If you are using Laravel, it provides a wildcard subdomain routing feature

http://laravel.com/docs/4.2/routing#sub-domain-routing

It works really really well.

We also allow users to point their custom-domain name to the sub-domain they have been given (http://www.mydomain.com -> http://sub.postatic.com)

All works well.

We use 1and1 for our main domain (postatic.com) and our DNS is handled by Linode.

Let me know if you have any further questions. Will gladly share knowledge! (hello@postatic.com)

benologist11y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcard_DNS_record

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