Question

I’m a complete newbie when it comes to servers, so I need some help. Basically, I want to have a subdomain on my VPS. I’m not too concerned where the files reside, though of course I would like them separated if possible.

I found a guide to doing this that basically sums the procedure up in five steps:

1. Create directories to host the content of a new virtual site.
   1. Make a copy of the /etc/apache2/sites-available/defaults file with a site appropriate name.
   2. Change the two /var/www/ entries to the actual directory of the new site.
   3. Add the ServerName line with the real domain name you will be hosting.
   4. Use a2ensite to enable the new site, and finally reload Apache2 so it knows about the new site

I tried all of this, but I can’t get it to work. I didn’t get any errors at any point during this process, but when I enter the address with the subdomain into my browser, I get a “Server not found” error.

The company that hosts my VPS has an admin page where I can set up subdomains. Stupid question: do I have to do reconfigure the DNS records or something while doing this, or is it likely that the problem is caused by something else?

Additional note: I followed a guide on howtoforge.com when setting up the server, which in hindsight may not have been the brightest move on my part. It is possible that I made a mistake there that is somehow affecting me now?

Answer 1

Assuming you’ve setup the subdomain correctly in your VPS’ admin page, the only thing left to check here is that you’ve actually created the subdomain in your DNS administration page (have you?). For example, I use afraid.org to manage my DNS records and to add a subdomain, it’s essentially:

Type: A
Subdomain: sparky
Domain: example.com
Destination: 120.34.2.3 (this would be your VPS' IP address)

In general, you add a (sub)domain by:

sparky.example.com A 120.34.2.3

Please keep in mind that you want to add an A record (this is important!).