Drupal Tutorials

Step 1: Server Setup

1 First let’s create a DNS entries file for the website (The purpose of creating the DNS entry is to be able to test the sub domains in our local machine)

DSN (Domain Name System) tells your server where a subdomain or web address should be directed to. It's basically a way of putting a human readable name over the top of an IP address.

2 To find the host file (that we can add our DSN entries to) go to: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\ then open the "hosts" file using Notepad.

Add the following entries, then save and close the "hosts" file:

3 Next we need to alter our Apache VirtualHost settings to look for the new subdomains.

Locate your servers httpd.conf or httpd-vhosts.conf file (which one you have depends on your server setup), if you are using XAMPP you'll find it at:

On Linux you will find your httpd.conf file at:

So go ahead and add the following to the bottom of your httpd.conf or httpd-vhosts.conf file:

You'll need to restart Apache to this change to take affect.
On Linux use: apachectl -k restart
On XAMPP you can use the XAMPP control panel or restart your computer.

Great!! We already have two subdomains but to make it works we need to create a folder inside of our apache installation.

Step 2: Drupal "sites" folder setup

1 Go to: C:\Program Files\xampp\htdocs and create a folder called "www.site.local", this is where your default Drupal installation will reside so add all your Drupal installation files to this folder.

Proceed with the Drupal installation and test the site on your local machine.

Step 3: Let’s create our subdomain

We going to create a "blog" subdomain (blog.site.local) for our main Drupal install (www.site.local).

1 Let’s add the new subdomain folder inside of C:/Program Files/xampp/htdocs/www.site.local/sites and call it "blog.site.local" (see screengrab below).

The new "blog.site.local" folder will contain all the settings, themes and modules that are specific to the new subdomain, any modules or themes common to all sites should go in you sites/all folder.
Find out more about installing modules and themes.

2 Now we need to create a new settings.php file for Drupal to recognize that the blog.site.local is a subdomain of the main www.site.local domain.

To do this follow the following steps:
A) Copy the settings.php file from www.site.local/sites/default to the folder blog.site.local

B) Now we need to decide if we want our subdomains to share the same database or to have a different database for each subdomains (a Drupal multisite setup).
I will explain how to set up both. Let’s start with a single database for each subdomain:

Single Database Set up
1 Open the settings.php in our new "blog.site.local" folder and modify the $db_url and $db_prefix to reflect our database settings.
Let’s replaced the line below with our database, username and password:

<?php
//$db_url = 'mysql://username:password@localhost/databasename';
$db_url = 'mysql://drupal:drupal@localhost/drupal_db';
?>

2 Now we need to alter the $db_prefix variable so that all our database tables for this subdomain are preffixed with some text so we can distinguish between them and the main domain tables.

You can choose any prefix you want for your $db_prefix configuration, I'll use 'blog1_':

<?php
$db_prefix = 'blog1_';
?>

And that is it!! Here you have a drupal site with subdomains using a single database!!!

Now just point your site to: www.blog.site.local and proceed with your installation. Each subdomain will have our own database.

Set up Multiple databases
Follow the exactly the same proceedure as with the sinle database set up but make sure you leave the $db_prefix blank:

<?php
$db_prefix = '';
?>

And that is it!! Here you have a drupal site with subdomains using a multiple database!!!

Now just point your site to: www.blog.site.local and proceed with your installation. Your subdomain will share the same database.