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A ‘catch all’  subdomain allows you to redirect all users who might type in http://subdomain.yourdomain.com  where ‘subdomain’ could be any subdomain which you would like to redirect users from.

Why would you need catch all subdomains

Maybe you have a few subdomains but sometimes your visitors are accessing non-existing subdomains. So the most appropriate solution would be to either redirect them to your main website or at least show them a list of available pages.

Step-by-step configuration in Plesk

1. Create a subdomain ‘z-WILDCARD’ in Plesk – under the admin section of the right domain.
   Why do we need this name?  Because this entry should be the last entry in the list of subdomains, otherwise this “trick” will not work.
2. Add special configuration (catchall for all subdomains) to the vhosts.conf file of this subdomain.
   Normally it’s located in /srv/www/vhosts/domain.com/subdomains/z-WILDCARD/conf/vhosts.conf. You have to create it – normally you need the root user to do this. Copy the following content into the file:
   ServerAlias *.domain.com
3. Apply the new configuration – recreate the Apache configuration. You have to run the tool websrvmng which is a Plesk tool that manages and creates the webserver configuration. Execute the following as root user.
   /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -u --vhost-name=domain.com
4. Finally – restart Apache to load the new configuration, also as root.
   service httpd restart

That’s it! Now your users can access non-existing subdomains as e.g. doesnotexists.domain.com and you should see the Plesk page displayed for new pages.

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Tags: catch-all Subdomain, catchcall subdomain, plesk catchall

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 10:41 am and is filed under Plesk Control Panel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.