Make subdomain sites seperate (eg, sub1.site.com and sub2.site.com)

Hey Matt! 👋

To achieve what you’re aiming for, where each subdomain (like sub1.site.com and sub2.site.com) points to a separate directory on your server, you’ll want to use Apache Virtual Hosts. This allows you to configure Apache to serve different content based on the subdomain.

You can check out the guide here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-apache-virtual-hosts-on-ubuntu-20-04

But overall the process is similar on Fedora.

Here’s a quick guide to setting this up:

• In your DigitalOcean control panel, make sure you’ve set up A records for each subdomain (sub1.site.com, sub2.site.com, etc.) that point to your Droplet’s IP address. It sounds like you’ve already done this step!

• On your Droplet, create separate directories to hold the files for each subdomain. For example:

  sudo mkdir -p /var/www/sub1
  sudo mkdir -p /var/www/sub2
  

• Place your website files in each respective directory.

• Open Apache’s configuration file for virtual hosts. On Fedora, you may need to edit the file located at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf, or, if Virtual Hosts are in a separate directory, look under /etc/httpd/conf.d/.

• Add separate <VirtualHost> blocks for each subdomain. Here’s an example configuration:

  <VirtualHost *:80>
      ServerName sub1.site.com
      DocumentRoot /var/www/sub1
  
      <Directory /var/www/sub1>
          AllowOverride All
          Require all granted
      </Directory>
  </VirtualHost>
  
  <VirtualHost *:80>
      ServerName sub2.site.com
      DocumentRoot /var/www/sub2
  
      <Directory /var/www/sub2>
          AllowOverride All
          Require all granted
      </Directory>
  </VirtualHost>
  

• This tells Apache to serve files from /var/www/sub1 when someone visits sub1.site.com, and files from /var/www/sub2 for sub2.site.com.

• Save the configuration file and then test it for syntax errors:

  sudo apachectl configtest
  

• If everything looks good, restart Apache to apply the changes:

  sudo systemctl restart httpd
  

If you want to secure these subdomains with HTTPS, you can use Let’s Encrypt to generate SSL certificates for each subdomain. Certbot can automate this for Apache. Just run:

sudo dnf install certbot python3-certbot-apache
sudo certbot --apache -d sub1.site.com -d sub2.site.com

This will configure SSL for your subdomains, making them accessible via HTTPS.

Now, visit http://sub1.site.com and http://sub2.site.com. Each subdomain should load content from its respective directory.

On another note, if you’re interested in using DigitalOcean’s App Platform instead of managing this setup manually, you could deploy separate apps for each subdomain using their individual Git repositories. App Platform allows you to map custom domains (or subdomains) to different apps, and it automatically handles SSL for you.

You can check out DigitalOcean App Platform and see if that’s a better fit for your project if you’d prefer a managed setup.

Let me know how it goes or if you have more questions!

- Bobby