Question

I am on the way of building a SaaS application using Zend Framework on PHP. Here is the basic information of the project. Its Project Management System on SaaS model. When the user registered on the site, they will get a domain name like the format:

user_name.pms.com

user_name – The chosen User Name when the user registered on the Project Management System (pms)

pms.com – is the main SaaS Server.

Currently we provide the Sub Domain on our Server. And for big firms, it won’t look good and they may prefer to get their own domain instead of this default one. So there may be:

user_name.pms.com [Always Present]

user1.com [ The custom or independent domain of the User ] This custom domain needs to link into the default user url.

The full website is planning to develop using Zend Framework.

On Zend Framework, we are having following HTAccess on the root folder for its working and is below:

SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV development
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* index.php

Here are my questions:

1. Do I really need to create Sub Domain like profile url for all users once they registered on the site ?

2. If it need to create Sub Domains, can PHP check whether the chosen sub domains exists or not and can create Sub Domains from the Script itself ?

3. If there is no need to Sub Domain, can we achieve the same goal using HTAccess in Zend Installation ?

4. Can you provide the HT Access code which does the following:

“user_name1.pms.com” need to redirect to “pms.com”

“user_name1.pms.com/contact” need to redirect to “pms.com/contact”

ie any request on the Sub Domain like URL must redirect to main website with the format: pms.com followed by Query String.

Very Important:

Important 1:

When I said the redirect to main website, I need to keep the sub domain like URL on the address bar but the request will be served by main website.

ie “user_name1.pms/contact” is going to be served from pms.com/contact but on address bar we still see the url “user_name1.pms/contact”

Important 2:

Whenever we uses the HTAccess to redirect the request to main Zend Server, can I identify the actual url entered on the address bar ie “site1.pms or site1.com” ?

Another Question of Custom Domain Redirection:

The custom domain name like “site1.com” or “site2.com” need to redirect to either:

Option (a): “pms.com”
Option (b): “site1.pms.com

to serve the request. Here also, I need to keep the url on address bar same like the one user entered.

1. Which above option is better (a) or (b) ?

2. Which technology does this work, domain mapping or CName ? Or Any other technology for make this working.

Answer 1

The sub domains can be handled using some technique in CPanel. To add vurtual sub domains from CPanel, do the steps:

1. Select “CPanel – Sub Domains”
2. Enter star and choose your domain name
3. Choose the directory to which you need to redirect

And handle the redirection from your page.

To develop a SaaS application using Zend, check the tutorial SaaS application development using PHP in Zend Framework