Domain Masking/Cloaking Issues

To make things easier, I’m hosting multiple websites on subdomains of my main website.

However, I do not want my customers to know that they are on a subdomain, I want the feel of a main domain.

For example, I’ve a website on “lamarsoutternewsletter.nicholaslamarsoutter.com”, which is a WordPress page. I own the domain name “lamarsouternews.com”. I’ve cloaked “lamarsoutter.com” to the subdomain, which at first appears to achieve the desired result – people go to “lamarsoutternews.com” and view the website as its own domain though it’s actually a subdomain.

However, none of the links work on WordPress – they all say file not found. This included the admin folder, which could not be found except by acing it through the full subdomain name. WordPress allows you to change internal settings, allowing you to set the install location. I set it to “lamarsoutternews.com” to attempt to fix the problem, and that worked for a few hours before losing access to the admin pages even from the subdomain.

I am wondering if this is something that can be done with .htaccess, whereby using the RewriteEngine and RewriteCond, (along with either mirroring, cloaking, or redirect) can get the same effect – to allow access to the subdomain (and all the features of the WordPress site) through a cloaked domain.

Cloaking has worked on another website, but that site is a standard website. With Wordpress the main page loads, but you can’t click on ANYTHING.

Any thoughts? Is there a better way (like through .htaccess) to do this?

Thanks!

Nick

BTW, how is creating subdomains easier than just hosting a new wordpress install on the actual domains?

There's no real such thing as cloaking. Someone who takes a close look at the site will see that it's not cloaked. The best you can hope for is to Mirror the subdomain as a new domain.

But as the above poster implied, with all this effort, why not just create the new domain in the first place, rather than create a subdomain? Is this a multi-site WordPress installation?

-Scott

Well, I've got 6 different websites, each take up 25mb... Seems kind of stupid to buy six webhosting packages at 300MB each, when I could host all on one and use sub-domains (or folders, I suppose). Don't you think?

We're talking about hosting at DreamHost, right?

You can host unlimited domains here. You don't have to buy a package for each domain. I do this:
Create a User. Create a Domain. Maybe create a SubDomain
Create another User. Create another Domain.
Repeat 10 or so times until all of my domains are all set up in my hosting package.

-Scott

Well, what do you mean by actual domains?

I have six domain names, one hosting package. I want to host 6 websites on the one package. Seems to me you create 6 sub domains, and point each domain to the subdomain.

Unless I’m missing something (and I hope I am), a domain name alone is not a website. It has to point somewhere. When you buy a package here you get one domain name free, which points to your package. Great, that’s one website. I want to hose 6 more, with 6 domain names I own. I could buy 6 packages, but that’s a lot of money to host websites between 5-20 mb each.

Am I missing something? As I understand it, to have multiple websites on one package, I create sub-domains and point a domain name to them. Great, but none of the methods of doing this TRULY give the illusion of something running on the actual domain name (cloaking comes VERY close, but fails with wordpress).

The reason I don’t install wordpress on the master domain is because… Well, it’s already there. I need to install 3 wordpress websites. I can’t install wordpress 3 times on the main domain.

Now, if I can install it on the other domains, great, but right now they’re just names – just domain names. I can’t install on a domain name. They have to point somewhere, but they don’t work great on sub domains with cloaking and I don’t want to buy a new package for a few megabyte website.

Any thoughts?

Yes. Multi-site install.

I've 6 websites (1 with PhPBB, 3 with Wordpress)... Each website averages about 10mb. I don't want to buy 6 packages, it's a waste- I get 150GB per package... I don't want to buy 6 packages, pay $48 a month when I'd be using a TOTAL, for all 6 websites, less than 100MB... It's a phenominal waste.

So I'd like to buy 1 package, and do 1 website and 5 subdomains, but point the domain names to those subdomains.

If Cloaking truly worked, I could do this. But it isn't working, at least not with Wordpress (apears to work with PhPBB, but havn't tested thoroughly).

Any thoughts? Again, I thought .htaccess.... I suppose I can test it, when I have some time, but hopping somebody else had an anwser to this.

Take a deep breath. Here's what I do:

I currently have one Level 1 plan. I host 4 domains in this plan, each with 2-3 subdomains.

You can host as many domains as you want in one plan. For example, you could host the following on a single Level 1 plan:
nsoutter.org
nsoutter.com
nsoutter.net
nothersoutter.org
onemoresoutter.org

If you want each of them to contain a WordPress site, the most straightforward thing to do is to do a one-click install into each of the sites.

You can do all this on $7.95-$9.95 a month hosting package (not counting domain registration).

So before we go on to more complicated solutions, can we agree that this would work?

Yes, yes, yes!

We can agree that would work... How do you set that up (AND THANK YOU!!!)

I have the domain name, and it's been dransfered to the dreamhost as the registrar... Now, if I just un mirror them, will they then become their own site, or do I need to do something?

AND THANKS!

1. Do you already have all the WordPress installations done?
2. Do you already have all the content created in WordPress?
3. How did you set up WordPress in the subdomains?

It might be easier for you if you just go and add the domains as fully hosted in the control panel and then do a WordPress one-click install in each of the domains. You can then set up or migrate the content for each of the domains one at a time.