generating content based on subdomain

Question

This is a dupe of a SO question. But I don't know if it involves setting a server config. How do I implement something like http://why.does.my.head.explode.net/? I want to do something like ytmnd where each url is a different user generated page. I might need something as simple as pointing to a directory so dirname.mysite.com will redirect to http_public/userGenContent/dirname/

Is this a server config? I plan to get Windows Server 2003 (for now) to host a ASP.NET project. How would I implement/setup a site like explode.net and ytmnd?

Answer 1

It is both network-, server- and application-related.

First of all, DNS: you need to have a wildcard record that maps *.yourdomain.com to the same IP address.

Second, web server: you need to define a wildcard site (or use the default web site, if the server does only that), so that IIS answers any request it receives whose host header ends with "yourdomain.com".

Third, application: you need to use a server-side application (written in your language of choice, ASP.NET is definitely ok) which parses the received request and shows the right content.