Hi All,

I need to find a host, reasonably priced, that allows wildcard subdomains. Does anyone have suggestions?


Thx!!

It's not a complicated procedure to set up a wild card sub domains, but it is not commonly mentioned in product line descriptions. That said, if there is a limit to the number of sub domains, then a wild card entry is probably out of the question.

You may be able to accomplish the required results by hosting your DNS using a third party, of which many may be free services. The problem with a DNS only solution is that sub domains that aren't' created on the server will end up on the default server page.

i have heard of wildcard domains but subdomains i would like to see it in action

I have never heard of either wildcard domains or sub-domains. Could someone take a minute to explain this term to me? I thought I was familiar with the basics but obviously, I still have a lot to learn.

I should have posted sooner. There's no such thing as 'wildcard domains' with the exception of SSL certificates. However, as related to DNS and a web server it cannot exist.

Wildcard subdomains are another matter.

Essentially, when a surfer wants to go to a site they enter the domain.tld (tld stands for top level domain, ie. .com and .net). As sites expand they may want to have parts of the site hosted on other servers or using other accounts so they create a subdomain, such as sub.domain.tld. A wildcard subdomain is when DNS zone record for the domain has an entry similar to:
*.domain.tld. IN A XXXX 123.123.12.123

This is going to forward any request for a subdomain of that domain to the IP address 123.123.12.123.

The httpd server will have an entry for domain.tld with an alias entry of *.domain.tld. So all subdomains will be forwarded to the same site (file folder on the server) as the domain.

It's useful when you want to use mod_rewrite to direct different subdomains to other folders or files.

Most of the hosts can setup wildcard sub domains for your domain , upon request. First, find out a reputable webhost and then contact them with your requirements.

Would that be an effective strategy for targeting multiple keywords with the same content? For example, say I have a site about getting traffic. Could I use the wildcard subdomains to target those searching for different terms such as trafficbuilding.domain.tld, gettraffic.domain.tld, trafficgeneration.domain.tld, etc?

I'm not sure that it would make any difference. It's simply just another sub domain no matter how you look at it. As a wildcard it's going to deliver either default content or if the subdomain actually exists it's content.

Search engines don't like duplicate content, so you'd have to create unique content for each. It's probably just easier to create a great website that would get links to it without you even asking for them.