1. Create an A record for your sub-domain that points to your droplet
2. Create a .config file for your sub-domain site in /etc/apache2/sites-available
3. Create the directory for your site in /var/www (or wherever you said it was in the config file)
4. Enable the site in apache with: sudo a2ensite sub.yourdomain.com (or whatever you named your site in the config)
5. reload apache: sudo service apache2 reload

NOTE: the DNS record you create might take awhile to propagate, so be patient..sleep on it before panicking and re-editing all of your files..

Maybe this if you want to use .htaccess:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/staging
    ServerAlias   www.staging.domain.com  
    ServerName staging.domain.com   (or whatever name you gave it)

    <Directory /var/www/staging>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride all
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
                Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHELOGDIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHELOGDIR}/error.log/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

try using <VirtualHost *:80> rather than: <VirtualHost 104.236.80.93:80>

the only other thing I have noticed is that you are using DocumentRoot /var/www/html for your top-level domain, while your other sites are sub-directories. I wonder if that could be causing some conflict.

You probably know this already, but just to check:

files in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ are symlinks to the files in sites-available. As such, if you were renaming your config files, you should delete all those symlinks, then rename the actual files in /sites-available/ and then re-enable all of your sites....(as opposed to just renaming symlinks in/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/)

Maybe use A records instead of CName..

When you create your a records, you just need to put in the sub-domain (calis) rather than the full domain (calis.kludgecruft.com)

Your A record for a subdomain will be just the one word, like:
A----------------->staging-----> dropletip

because those records are for your domain, so it already knows domain.com

what does your conf file look like for your sub-domain?

Hi Adam,

I deleted the A record & created the new A record as you said.

Here is what the conf file looks like:

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/staging

ErrorLog ${APACHELOGDIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHELOGDIR}/error.log/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Actually I just copied the 000-default.conf file in sites-available directory & then modified the document root.

Let me know if I have to add something.

Thanks in Advance.

Hello @sierracircle I followed your advice and also a couple of DO tutorials the DNS and the Virtualhost ones, oh and one from symfony2 for server setup. But I am still not being able to make my subdomains work properly. I wanted to ask you for some help.

I tried various DNS configurations, switched DNS from my registar to DO and tried with A and CNAME records, here's how my zone file looks like:

$ORIGIN kludgecruft.com.
$TTL 1800
kludgecruft.com. IN SOA ns1.digitalocean.com. hostmaster.kludgecruft.com. 1421532591 10800 3600 604800 1800
kludgecruft.com. 1800 IN NS ns1.digitalocean.com.
kludgecruft.com. 1800 IN NS ns2.digitalocean.com.
kludgecruft.com. 1800 IN NS ns3.digitalocean.com.
kludgecruft.com. 1800 IN A 104.236.80.93
www.kludgecruft.com. 1800 IN CNAME kludgecruft.com.
calis.kludgecruft.com. 1800 IN CNAME kludgecruft.com.
orlybg.kludgecruft.com. 1800 IN A 104.236.80.93

I have my domain kuldgecruft.com and have 2 test subdomains orlybg (A), calis (CNAME) and WWW as an alias for the main domain so to speak.

Here are my apache vhost files (one for each), all 3 are enabled, I've restarted apache in various ways, I changed the name of the flle of the 'main vhost' to 000main.conf because it wasn't being taken as the first host.

****000main.conf

<VirtualHost 104.236.80.93:80>
    ServerName kludgecruf.com


    DocumentRoot /var/www/html
    <Directory /var/www/html>
        # enable the .htaccess rewrites
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted

    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

****orlybg

<VirtualHost 104.236.80.93:80>
    ServerName orlybg.kludgecruf.com

    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/myproject
    <Directory /var/www/html/myproject>
        # enable the .htaccess rewrites
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted

    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error_orlybg.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access_orlybg.log combined

</VirtualHost>

****calis

<VirtualHost 104.236.80.93:80>
    ServerName calis.kludgecruf.com


    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/calis
    <Directory /var/www/html/calis>
        # enable the .htaccess rewrites
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted

    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error_calis.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access_calis.log combined

</VirtualHost>

I think maybe this can help:

apachectl -t -D DUMP_VHOSTS
VirtualHost configuration:
104.236.80.93:80       is a NameVirtualHost
         default server kludgecruf.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000main.conf:1)
         port 80 namevhost kludgecruf.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000main.conf:1)
         port 80 namevhost calis.kludgecruf.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/calis.conf:1)
         port 80 namevhost orlybg.kludgecruf.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/orlybg.conf:1)

I'm not well versed in apache, I am a PHP developer, and I can find my way in linux, and everything looks find to me, I can't figure out why every URL of my domain responses the same thing.

Thanks in advance! cheers