Subdomains

One thing that you could do is is configure Virtualmin to accept requests for all sub-domains under example.com - this can be done at Server Configuration -> Website Options -> Website matches all sub-domains?. You can then add the RewriteRule above to serve any sub-domain from the sub-directory of the same name.

Would that work for you?

This is sort-of out of the scope of Virtualmin, but I am pretty sure what you want can be done using Apache's mod_rewrite directives, like RewriteRule. You can set this in httpd.conf manually via the UI (at Services -> Configure Website) ... and Virtualmin won't complain about these types of changes.

Full docs are at : http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule

Check out this posting, which seems to have some good instructions on the kind of re-writing you are trying to do : http://blog.merhar.si/post/757871034/mapping-subdomains-to-subdirectorie...

Note that this is intentional in Virtualmin. The whole "subdomain" concept in cPanel is, frankly, idiotic and confusing to users that aren't familiar with it.

There was a subdomain account type in Virtualmin for a couple of years, that acted like the cPanel subdomain...but it confused a lot more people than it helped, and people thought they needed to use a subdomain account to have a subdomain named server (when a sub-server or a regular virtual server can have any name you want), and so they kept wanting to do advanced stuff with subdomains which are impossible with the limitations of how subdomains work (being just a subdirectory of the parent public_html, those kind of accounts can't have mailboxes, can't have separate logins, can't have independent databases and users, etc. because it's just a subdirectory and an httpd rewrite rule).

In short, we've never seen a good reason to use subdomains (note that subdomains consumed licensed domains in Virtualmin just like subservers). Only aliases do not consume licensed domains. Any time you have a separate website Virtualmin counts it as a domain. And, it sounds like your primary purpose for using subdomains was to avoid consuming licenses for new websites...which wouldn't work, even if subdomains still existed in Virtualmin. (You never see this issue in cPanel because it is only available in an unlimited domains license, which, as you note, costs a lot more than a small domain license from Virtualmin.) ;-)

While Jamie has provided lots of details on how to achieve what you're after, I kinda wonder if maybe there aren't better ways to solve the problem than cramming more websites into the public_html of your top-level domain. But, if cost is a significant factor and upgrading to a larger Virtualmin license is not an option, then I guess it is one way to get around the license limit. When we removed the feature, there was some discussion in the forums about replicating it mostly automatically via Server Templates. If you wanted to get really fancy, I suspect you could even use Custom Fields to add a section to the Create Virtual Server and Edit Virtual Server pages to allow users to add or remove subdomains. But, again, that's really bending things in nasty ways that don't really makes sense...I've never been able to figure out why cPanel even has such an account type. It really just doesn't make any sense.

No one's accusing anyone of anything here. ;-)

We don't mind if folks make use of rewrite rules and stuff to accomplish this kind of thing, even if it is to avoid spending money (though the free Virtualmin GPL may be a better choice if cost is the biggest factor in decision making). We happily spent quite a bit of time in the forums working with the few folks that were in your situation and wanted to keep doing things the cPanel way while they migrated to full sub-servers (which should also do what you want, though you'd need to update your paths if they rely on things being in subdirectories).

The problem with subdomain accounts was one of extreme confusion for users, so it really just had to go. The amount of support time we spent trying to convince people that subdomains were a special case and were extremely limited, and were not required for having a domain that happens to have a subdomain name (as I mentioned, we had tons of users thinking that was the only way to have a domain named sub.domain.tld, when in fact you'd usually want a Virtual Server or a Sub-Server for that purpose; only when coming over from cPanel does it really make sense to use a subdomain). These days, subdomain accounts are converted to Sub-servers, with most features disabled, when they are migrated from cPanel.

In short, you can probably do everything you want with Sub-Servers, though it does alter the path. But it does allow you to share databases, file access, etc., and have a single point of administration for all of the domains, while also allowing dramatically more capabilities for each domain (though all of those capabilities are optional; you don't have to permit mailboxes to exist, or have extra databases, or whatever; it can just be another website just like the subdomain in cPanel). The only difference in such a case is that the path of public_html is:

/home/domain/domains/sub.domain.tld/public_html

Rather than:

/home/domain/public_html/sub/

A bit more typing for a lot more flexibility.

Cool, glad you got that working! RewriteRule is incredibly complex, and I still struggle to get it to do what I want :-)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.