Custom domain with Joomla

Question

Is there any nice component for Joomla 1.0.x allowing to serve custom domains? What I am trying to archieve is to sell subscription to my service and to offer custom branding including custom urls like yourcompany.myservice.com and even example.myservice.com. Any pointers? I am selling subscriptions themselves already for a long time, so the question is specifically on the domain part - how to manage apache vhosts/dns settings/whatever dynamically.

Answer 1

Since Joomla has moved on with version 1.5 it would be hard to find what you want for 1.0. I'd recommend switching to 1.5.

You can easily get multi-domain ability yourself. First you have to make sure all sub domains resolve to the same set of IPs. (*.yoursite.com)

For 1.0 you could probably get away with just plugins, but you might need to edit the core. If you use a plugin, say a system plugin, in the plugin you can check for the HOST header.

eg:

$host = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];

From this, you base your specific settings/parameters etc. You can also do the check from within components, modules etc.

An example would be loading different template. If the host is a sub domain, then load a custom template for that sub domain.

This is actually a lot easier to do with 1.5 as you can control what loads from plugins.

Answer 2

You don't need to change the apache config. There are several Plugins that can choose the Joomla configuration (including the template) and database based on the Domain name e.g. Joomla Multisites (btw. I would really recommend switching to 1.5)