Ray - StrongBox Question About Sub Domains

[Lee]

I know that when a member has to login via a StrongBox protected site the members area has some kind of sub-domain string in the url showing however, does the effect any type of sub.domain being used for a specific root domain name?

For example, if i have paysite.com/members/ using StrongBox, if i had a seperate sub domain setup like galleries.paysite.com/members/ is that going to effect anything with either...

1) StrongBox protection on that site or;
2) The new sub domain?

Im about to have some work started on how our custom CMS operates and am considering giving each site a gallery.paysite.com and movies.paysite.com sub domain so we can have better control of content distribution inside the paysites members areas.

Regards,

Lee

[HunkyLuke]

if you are running your members area on a subdomain like pics.site.com then strongbox will use a sub-sub domain like sdfasdf.pics.site.com

if you want both site.com and pics.site.com protected you may need 2 installs of strongbox and use the secure handoff from one to the other. I assume you are using subdomains for pics because of content sharing? If yes, you should look at using symlinks instead of subdomains.

[raymor]

+1 on everything Luke said.

Im about to have some work started on how our custom CMS operates and am considering giving each site a gallery.paysite.com and movies.paysite.com sub domain so we can have better control of content distribution inside the paysites members areas.

Different host names (subdomains) are probably not the best way to accomplish
your goal. Feel free to call me to discuss options in that regard. As Luke said, for
sharing content between sites, symlinks are normally the way to go, but it sounds
like you're doing something beyond just sharing content. You can use different
subdomains even with the wildcard, though, if we or your server admin sets up the
wildcard with that in mind.

Here's the breakdown on how the wildcard serveralias, used to catch typos and
for Strongbox, interacts with specific subdomains. First, we have the simple case.
Suppose you have:
members.site.com
tour.site.com
fhg.site.com

We would create a wildcard for *.members.site.com. That doesn't match
tour.site.com, fhg.site.com, or www.site.com, so they are unaffected, Nothing
to talk about there.

Now where it gets more interesting is if you use site.com/members/ as opposed
to members.site.com, so you have:
site.com
tour.site.com
fhg.site.com

In that case, the easiest thing for you is to just tell us that you have subdomains
and we'll handle it when we do the wildcard for you, or we'll work with your host
so they can set it up to work right. That means you need not read the following
details - we'll take care of it.

If we didn't know that you had those other subdomains, we would ask your host to
add *.site.com. Now *.site.com matches tour.site.com, so which one does the surfer
see? They see whichever is listed first in your config file. What happens is that DNS
and Apache both look through the list if names until they find one that matches.
If tour.site.com is listed first, it matches and that works. If, on the other hand, *.site.com were listed first, it would match and the line for tour.site.com would never
be reached.

If your host is paying attention, they'd catch that and fix it in either of two ways.
First, they could simply switch the lines in the config file to get the proper order.
Just list *.site.com, the catch-all, last. Another way to do it, if perhaps you were
using a control panel that made control of order difficult, would be to make the
wildcard for sb*.site.com instead of *.site.com. Then it only affects
subdomaisn that start with "sb", which is what we use. The tech who is actually
doing that should know that the "sb*" goes only in the ServerAlias, not in the DNS.
The DNS needs to use *.site.com, so either the whole domain should all be on the
same server or else ordering must be correct. That's a bit detailed, I know, but
CEOs need not worry about the details. Just tell us what you wish to accomplish
and we'll take care of the technical details, working with your server admin or web
host as needed.