After all the tribulations mentioned in the iWeb forum at Apple Discussions about having a Personal Domain and configuring the domain at the domain registrar, I couldn't resist the temptation to have one too.

I didn't shop for the cheapest deal, but went to the business section of my ADSL provider, KPN. I looked around, downloaded the manual to look for the dreaded C-word, found it and determined it looked easy.

The domain had 2 pre-configured IP addresses and names:
http://wyodor.net and http://www.wyodor.net. I noticed that both were A records to a IP address with a placeholder page:
http://wyodor.net.

To add a CNAME I couldn't use www. So I used another one:
http://me.wyodor.net.

;; QUESTION SECTION:

;me.wyodor.net.             IN     A

;; ANSWER SECTION:

me.wyodor.net.      3600 IN   CNAME   web.me.com.

web.me.com.         1781 IN   A    17.250.248.156

At home I have a Mac running Personal Webserver. I use free domains at DynDNS that point to my computer. I have Personal Webserver configured to accept these domains. You have to edit the httpd.config file.

At my KPN account  I entered an A record with my IP number at home and a sub-domain. Worked perfectly. (As previous stated you have to edit the httpd.conf file to accept the sub-domain.) Then it occured to me that I could change the pre-configured IP address of http://www.wyodor.net and have it point to http://web.me.com.

With Network Utility.app I looked up http://web.me.com and found this:

;web.me.com.       IN   A

;; ANSWER SECTION:

web.me.com.    2015 IN  A   17.250.248.156

It's the same as in the CNAME lookup. I entered 17.250.248.156 in the A record and went to bed. Hopefully the internet was still there next morning. It was and now I can use http://www.wyodor.net.

A lookup looks like this:

;; QUESTION SECTION:

;www.wyodor.net.       IN   A

;; ANSWER SECTION:

www.wyodor.net.    2301  IN   A  17.250.248.156

Up till now, nobody complained.

Note: I noticed that MobileMe doesn’t really care about the prefix. Any prefix will work. So it’s up to the user what to use.

Adding a domain to httpd.conf

To add a domain to Personal Webserver you have to add a Virtual Host to the httpd.conf file in folder /etc/httpd/

<VirtualHost *:80>

1. ServerName something.wyodor.net
   

2. DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/Documents/Something/
   

</VirtualHost>

Folder Something can either be a real folder or a alias (symbolic link) to a folder somewhere else on your computer. (24 juli 2008)

Apache Virtual Host manual

Update 24 juli 2008: After a new visit it turned out I could enter a CNAME with web.me.com.

Creating a Virtual Host file

8 september 2008: To make life easier and to avoid mistakes, it is not necessary to configure the httpd.conf file.

You can add a Virtual Host to a separate file. To do so, you use a plain text editor or Web Control.

Go to folder /etc/httpd/users/ with the Go to Folder command (Cmd-Shift-G) in the Go menu in the Finder menubar.

If present, open file vhost.conf with Web Control or else create a New file (Cmd-N) in Web Control.

Choose Add New Directive (Cmd-K) in the Operations menu.

Type ServerName in the Directive column and your "(sub).domainname" (including the apostrophes) in the Value column.

Choose Add New Directive again and type DocumentRoot in the Directive column and the "pathname/to/folder/" (including the apostrophes) in the Value column.

Choose Add New Group (Cmd-D) in the Operations menu and type VirtualHost * in the Directive column.

Drag the two Directives you created to this Group.

Save the vhost.conf file or save the newly created file as vhost.conf in the users folder you opened earlier.

Choose  Test Config (Cmd-T) in the Operations menu to check for errors.

Choose  Restart Apache (Cmd-R) in the Operations menu.

When you use a plaintext editor it should be as this:

1. <VirtualHost *>
   

2.     ServerName "placeholder.wyodor.net"
   

3.     DocumentRoot "/Users/SomeUserName/placeholder/"
   

4. </VirtualHost>
   

Open a browser window and type the URL of your (sub)-domainname. If a file is present it will be displayed in the browser. If your (sub)-domainname hasn't propagated thru the internet yet it will not show. In my experience it will take some 15-20 minutes.

If the Virtual Host is spelled wrong or the path to the folder does not exist, the default webpage of your Apache-server will be displayed. Check the vhost.conf file and the path to the folder. (8 september 2008)