Hello!

I am currently looking into hosting services. I am with Homestead as a paid account. I don't have my own domain name yet.

One thing I can't figure out that Homestead offers, that no one else seems to be able to do, is allow you (me) to have an unlimited number of "sites" within my own account.

My account has a set number of MBs of space and bandwidth but
I can create an unlimited number of subdomains on Homestead,

mysite1.homestead.com
mysite2.homestead.com
mysite3.homestead.com

that all link to my Homestead account.
Each site has it's own file manager that I can access.

My question is this........HOW???

How can a domain have user accounts that are "mini site" (non domain) packages? i.e....x MBs of space, bandwidth, ftp, etc?

How can it be configured so each user account can create their own subdomains under a main domain?

I am baffled as to how Homestead does it, but I would like to create a similar service some day.

Is there a web hosting software program that does this?

Can anyone explain how Homestead is doing it?

Thanks

cPanel, Plesk, ensim all do what you are talking about.

Its nothing new.

Well, I looked at cpanel but couldn't figure out how to do that.

Anyone have a blow by blow explaination? I'm lost.

Also, is there a way to set it up so it's automated and I wouldn't have to enter everything into cpanel?

I do not know about automation but in cpanel all you have to do is create a sub-domain and it should create a ftp account as well. You can of course just use the main account ftp to login and upload the files, but if not, when you use the ftp account made for the sub-domain, it allows you to just upload to that specific folder.

I know cpanel lets you do that but from what I can tell, You can't designate a user account and link the subdomain to it.

The Admin would have to manually create the subdomains, but it doesn't have a user account with password access.

Also I didn't see a way to set up users with custom site options or restrictions without entering their domain name.

If I am understanding correctly, (which I think I am) when you create a sub-domain you can create a ftp user that can upload to the directory you assign.

This will let you upload to that directory and have different content.

Hmmm.....

Okay, this is what I don't understand.

How do you create a hosting package for multiple users that don't have a domain name??


With Homestead, I have an account, no domain name... 50MB space, 2MB bandwidth.

Under that account I can create an unlimited number of sites each being a subdomain of Homestead.

With all the hosting plans I've seen, you either have to have a domain name that your hosting package is linked to, or you get ONE of their subs. You can't create more.


Am I making sense??

Hi wiseguy,
I understand exactly what you are talking about and we tried a test to see if we could do it with cpanel on a generic domain and the only way it was possible, well see below example:

Main domain = bright-dns.net

create a seperate account using a subdomain

= you.bright-dns.net

give it x amount of subdomains.

(Now this is where it goes of track) to create a subdomain in cPanel for you.bright-dns.net it has to be something like

= next.you.bright-dns.net

and as you can see this is not what you want.

What you want to do is end up with another domain like

= you2.bright-dns.net

I know this is possible by giving access to the main domain however for securety reasons you would be foolish to do that, so we also would like to know if there is another way to do this.

The only other way we can think of is to set the account up as a reseller, however again this would mean giving them control over the main domain.

Sorry we couldn't be of more help.