I have a client that not only wants to manage certain areas of his site (which I can manage with WebYep), but also want his customers (he is a home builder so there are not that many at a time) to be able to log in to individual private areas where he can communicate with them, upload and store documents, share images and current info regarding their home, etc. Can this be done with Freeway, or with a plug in or add-on?
I don’t see this on the hosting account. However, is it possible with Freeway to set up subdomains for each new client (i.e. clientname.mydomain.com) and then have a page on the main website where the client can click their name in a list of links and have a password dialog come up to gain access to their private pages (which would be contained on the subdomain)?
It’s important to understand how subdomains work, and how they differ from folders.
A subdomain is (technically) a different Web server than the one that serves the primary domain. Taken to its logical extreme, each domain on the web could be a separate machine (though it rarely is). A domain name (or subdomain name) is just a human-readable alias for a numerical address of a server somewhere. On my own address space, the server test.walterdavisstudio.com is on DigitalOcean on a “Droplet” VPS in New York, while scripty.walterdavisstudio.com is on a Joyent SmartMachine in Oakland, and shiny.walterdavisstudio.com is in my basement. At the same time, you can also have multiple subdomains on the same server, at the same IP address, and the DNS system and Apache (the Web server) can be easily configured to work that way too.
Some hosting providers (ModWest leaps to mind) have a feature whereby you can create a subdomain simply by adding a folder to your main hosting account’s root folder. So if you have a folder named htdocs that corresponds to http://example.com, and you create a subfolder at htdocs/whatever, then you instantly (through the magic of “wildcard DNS”) get a server at http://whatever.example.com. But you also get the same exact site if you go to http://example.com/whatever.
Many/most other hosting providers require that you are a little more deliberate about subdomains, and provide a portion of their control panel where you can map any given subdomain under your account to a specific folder in the Web server’s root. This is actually the better way to go, because then you don’t get the aforementioned leakage, where the subfolder is the same content as the subdomain. You can set different server settings on each subdomain – allow different content-types, etc. – and generally you get more control this way, at the expense of the convenience of the no-configuration-needed option.
Setting an Apache Realm (secure folder) on a folder makes no difference whether it is served as a subdomain or a subfolder. You can set a password or set of passwords on any folder that Apache can serve to the public. This is built in to the server since the year dot. Whether your host provides a neat control panel for this behavior or not, it is in there, and if you don’t see a way to enable it, file a support ticket with your host and ask that they make the setting for you. (Or seriously, hosting providers who make this easy are a dime a dozen, and it’s easier than ever to switch hosts, so make it easy on yourself and find a better host.)
Walter
On Jun 19, 2014, at 12:51 PM, steve farber wrote:
I don’t see this on the hosting account. However, is it possible with Freeway to set up subdomains for each new client (i.e. clientname.mydomain.com) and then have a page on the main website where the client can click their name in a list of links and have a password dialog come up to gain access to their private pages (which would be contained on the subdomain)?