Subdomain Setup

[Boojum]

I have now given up for the moment on sub-subdomains, but I have encountered two more problems.

 

1. When I reset my subdomains in CPanel, I named them "santa-cruz.squort.com", etc., but a subsequent check of my public_html folder reveals that CPanel omitted the "...squort.com" from each--although they did include the usual empty cgi-bin folders. I'm not sure if this will be a problem or not, but since they do not match the subdomain folders on my hard drive, I am concerned.

 

Is it possible to rename the subdomain folders in my FTP program, or do I need to go through CPanel yet again? And if the latter, how do I keep the same problem from recurring?

 

2. Atop each of my revised pages, there are six tabs corresponding to the main pages of the respective subdomains. This works well for pages in my root domain, but those in subdomain folders attach their own folder names in front of the correct URLs as coded on said pages.

 

Ought my subdomain folders to reside, as they do, inside my main hard-drive "Web Pages" folder, or should I drag their folders out and place them on the same level as said folder?

 

And if I leave them where they are, how do I code them to avoid this issue with the tabs?

[Boojum]

Hmmm.

 

I begin to wonder if I made a mistake in asking two questions in one thread.

 

Someone please advise me on this if nothing else: Ought I to rewrite the questions as two separate threads?

[Madmanmcp]

Boojum, the domain ".squort.com" is assumed in cpanel and you will not see it. This is normal. You name your subdomain "santa-cruz" and you will see a folder called "santa-cruz". You do not name it "santa-cruz.squort.com" anywhere. On your hard drive it will also be called "santa-cruz".

 

Sorry I can't answer question 2, I am having a difficult time following exactly what you are describing.

 

BoB

[Boojum]

1. Madmanmcp:

 

Thanks, although I should note that when I first created the subdomains, they did in fact contain the ".squort.com". Ergo, I found it odd that on re-creation they did not.

 

However, you are very likely right.

 

2. Now, can some experienced webmaster or admin please help me with question 2? Else my tabs will not function as intended.

[Madmanmcp]

Thanks, although I should note that when I first created the subdomains, they did in fact contain the ".squort.com". Ergo, I found it odd that on re-creation they did not.

What you may have done is created the subdomain using the full name "santa-cruz.squort.com" instead of just "santa-cruz". This may have confused everything by making it santa-cruz.squort.com.squort.com. When you then looked in cpanel you saw santa-cruz.squort.com and the last .squort.com did not display.

 

Why it finally dropped off I can not explain.

 

2. Now, can some experienced webmaster or admin please help me

 

Now I have been trying to ignore these comments of yours thinking you are unaware of the meaning. I did not answer this note because of the similar comments you made to me previously, but no one answered this one so I jumped in. If you think I am not qualified I will stop replying to you, just let me know.

[TCH-Dick]

If you think I am not qualified I will stop replying to you, just let me know.

Thumbs Up Madmanmcp, any and all help that you provide is appreciated by everyone here. Even if you provide a answer that doesn't quite satisfy the poster, it might help someone else. Thumbs Up

[Boojum]

Madmanmcp:

 

By no means did I mean to imply that you are not qualified. However, since you did say you didn't know the answer to question 2, it occurred to me that the question was perhaps fairly obscure, so I asked the assistance of those most likely to possess such abstruse knowledge.

 

If, however, you or any other user do have an answer to question 2, I would certainly like to see it .

 

This whole issue is driving me up any and every available vertical surface.

 

Does anyone know how I can get my navigation tabs to work in my subdomain pages?

 

And do I need to rephrase the question? As a newbie, I am aware that I'm probably not using the correct terminology, so bear with me.

[Madmanmcp]

Boojum, the way these boards work is for ANYONE to be able to help. When you qualify your questions with these "experienced webmaster or admin " statements it scares the regular members away and they sometimes have the answers you maybe looking for.

 

Now with that out of the way.

 

Let me think about this some more and do you have an example to show us so we can see what you are saying? A picture is worth a thousand words I hear and it will probably help here.

 

I need to drive back to work, lunch is over but I also have been reading from there...shhh. I'll check back in and we'll see if we can get you some answers.

[Boojum]

Madmanmcp et al.:

 

I really don't know how I'd go about supplying a picture, but I can and herewith will rephrase the question and see if I can make the issue clearer. I could, if it would help, also attach a copy of the code for my home page and a subdomain page; let me know if this would be of aid.

 

The question--clarified (I hope):

 

My means of navigating between subdomains is a set of tabs atop each page, one tab per subdomain.

 

On my homepage (squort.com), the subdomain URLs appear on mouseover in Internet Explorer as "santa-cruz.squort.com/index.html" and so forth. But on my subdomain pages, using the same code for the URLs, they display as "santa-cruz.santa-cruz.squort.com"--which of course results in a "File not found" error if the tab is clicked.

 

I'm sure there's some simple way of rewriting my code to avoid this, but remember, I'm a neophyte, so I really don't know what that would require.

 

Is that a bit clearer?

[Madmanmcp]

Thanks for the approval Dick, I appreciate it.

 

I wasn't going to stop helping here, I've been doing this type of volunteer help for a long time, so I am afraid you are stuck with me for awhile. Well at least a year, but from the way things look so far we'll keep hosting as long as you'll have us.

 

Rock Sign

[Madmanmcp]

Boojum, it sounds like a simple "coding" problem and the simple answer is to change the code in error to make it work. The correct code should have one instance of the santa-cruz not two.

 

Now if it were me, I would open up my text editor, find the lines that contain the bad code and correct it to say "santa-cruz" once, save and check the page.

 

I don't know what you are using so I am leaving all those instructions out. I hand code most of my pages and use a simple text editor. You may be using a different text editor or a Full blown WYSIWYG Web editor program, I don't know.

 

Does this help? Or do you need help on how to edited the code?

[Boojum]

Madmanmcp:

 

That's just the point: The HTML on each page does include only one "santa-cruz".

 

If I'd written "santa-cruz" and so forth twice, this problem would be long gone.

 

Would it help for me to upload a copy of the HTML pages (written in BBEdit Lite) for the homepage and one of the subdomain pages? It's not quite a picture , but it's the best approximation I can offer, as the pages have not yet been uploaded to the server.

[Madmanmcp]

Yes, upload was the "picture" I was hinting at.

 

Not only will we be able to see it, we can take a look at the code and someone will be able to see whats causing your problem.

[Boojum]

Madmanmcp et al.:

 

Herewith included are the HTML source pages for my homepage and one representative subdomain page. Please note that I have not yet changed "downloads.squort.com/kaleidoscope.html" (and so forth) in the URLs for the tabs to "downloads/kaleidoscope.html" (and so on)--nor am I quite sure if I should.

 

Hope this will give clearer "picture."

 

P.S.: Merda. It appears I can upload only one file per message. I picked the subdomain page; if you need to compare it with the homepage, I can upload that with a second message.

kaleidoscope.html

[TCH-Dick]

How are you making the links to the pages?

 

The absolute path

><a href="http://www.mysite.com/subdomain/index.html">

 

or the short version

><a href="subdomain/index.html">

 

If you are using the short one it would look for the directory subdomain. Since you are already there it would give an error.

 

Am I making sense? Or is the not the problem?

[Madmanmcp]

Ok, from what I see in your code you are using the short version for your links.

<a href="index.html" onmouseover="image1.src='images/tabhome-m.gif';"

onmouseout="image1.src='images/tabhomeinact.gif';">

 

I assume you are doing this to get your web pages to work both online and from your hard drive. This is fine except in several cases where it will not work because of moving around. You use the short version to conserve on space(typed characters) and this will work as long as you remain in the same location. The files, html and images and folders are located right where you are and the complete path to them is not needed.

 

But once you change locations, they cannot be found. This can be a difficult bridge for you to cross at this point. I know you have been round and round trying to design your site to work a certain way and had to start redesigning all over again...well you may need to redesign again .

 

OR...just duplicate your files in each subdomain. This way is a lot of extra work and a lot of duplicated files and remembering file name schemes and a lot of wasted disk space, on and on.

 

Not sure what else to tell you, maybe someone will come in with a better idea on what you can do.

[Madmanmcp]

Well thats an interesting bug.

 

I posted a reply and it does not show on the board. When I click on reply and look below the edit window in the "Last 10 post [in reverse order]" area my reply is showing.

 

hmmmm

 

lets see if it shows after I post this reply

[Madmanmcp]

There it is...on page 2. I specifically looked for a second page SEVERAL times and the option was not there. it wasn't at the top or the bottum of the page. Well at least the next note gave it a swift kick and got it working again.

 

I noticed someone else mention losing a reply and wonder if that happened to them also?

[Boojum]

Madmanmcp:

 

Thanks for taking the time to look over my code; you've been doing yeoman's work helping me try to solve this problem, and it is appreciated.

 

But before I go to the work of duplicating all my files in each subdomain, I really would like to confirm that this is the best solution. Specifically, I wonder if there's some way to code the tabs via CSS or some other method, such as a Javascript.

 

If you or anyone else can advise me on this--preferably in some more elegant and less clunky manner than by duplicating everything, which seems as though it could lead to problems of its own--I would be most thankful. This issue has cost me many hours of work and more of sleep, and I really would like to put it behind me.

[Boojum]

Regarding this bug Madmanmcp referred to:

 

I was also confounded by this. I received an e-mail notification that TCH-Dick had replied, and indeed I found it there on my first subsequent visit to the forum. I then went into BBEdit to check the coding in question and immediately returned to the forum.

 

Imagine my surprise when I found TCH-Dick's post no longer there.

 

At the time, I assumed he'd simply removed it. Only later, upon reading Madmanmcp's post, did I find that Dick's still did exist; it had, however, vanished from the actual post section, and appears only in the "Last 10 posts" area.

 

Eldritch.

[Boojum]

TCH-Dick:

 

I did try your idea of using absolute URLs--and got another kind of error. Yuck!

 

The browser looked on the internet for the file--as I suppose is logical--and returned an error for the good and simple reason that no files had yet been uploaded to that directory.

 

It appears so far as though the best practical workaround is to duplicate all my files into each subdomain folder as advised by Madmanmcp. But for obvious reasons I would prefer a less drastic solution if such exists.

[Madmanmcp]

Your more than welcome Boojum. I know you are really getting frustrated here and I do wish it was easier.

 

This is a suggestion and no way a critisism so please don't take it the wrong way. I just want you to get what you want.

 

It appears to me that the difficulty you are having is due to the "design" of your site and the way you want it to "act". You want it to be viewed both online and offline exactly the same way on each and this has set up some roadblocks because of the way each system works.

 

Is there a specific reason why it must work offline or is this just something you would like? The easiest solution I can see is to just forget about coding it to work both ways and concentrate on the job at hand...creating a kickass web page that is viewable by all ONLINE.

 

Most of the folks I know spend a lot of time looking from the outside in at the web pages they design, they worry about how it looks in different browsers. They worry about the speed it takes to download. They tweak the colors and the fonts, they change the size and move tables around. They are always asking others "hows it look on your end".

 

In other words its more important to get it right on the web, not on your hard drive. I look at the individual pieces while writing and creating and then upload and see how it looks. Then I make sure all the links and the whole site is functioning correctly online, thats where it needs to be working correctly anyway.

 

This is the design change I am suggesting. Forget about getting it to work on your hard drive.

 

Maybe someone else has a way that will work. I don't do Javascript so maybe someone else will jump in and havea way to get what you want. Good luck.

[Boojum]

Madmanmcp:

 

Thanks for the suggestion. If no more condign alternative offers itself, I may well have to adopt it. The fact is, though, that I really would like if at all possible (short of duplicating all my files in each subdomain folder) to continue having the site behave the same way on the internet and on my hard drive; it makes preflighting much easier.

 

Any further suggestions, from you or anyone else who may happen to know or discover a better way to handle this, would be welcome.

[TCH-Rob]

I do not think you can have it the exact same on your hd as you can on the web if you are using subdomains. I wont say it isnt out there but I have never seen software that could decode the fact that subdomain = subfolder on a hd.

[Boojum]

Once again it appears that I won't be able to set up my site precisely as I want it.

 

I do want to confirm, though: If my subdomain folders appear (via FTP) with such names as "santa-cruz"--as distinguished from "santa-cruz.squort.com"--is it in fact still correct to code a link to the default page in such a folder as, e.g., "http://santa-cruz.squort.com/index.html"?

[Madmanmcp]

Yes

 

(but with all the sub-sub-subdomain work you've been doing I don't know what's working or not working for you anymore)

[Boojum]

Madmanmcp:

 

Actually, I can't do sub-subdomains and so forth here, so that won't really be applicable. It seems the most I'll be able to manage is subdirectories inside my base subdomains.

 

In any case, for all your assistance, allow me to say, as George W. Bush would doubtless pronounce it, "Mercy bookowp, moan Amy."