Wildcard Subdomains + Directories?

[zachr]

Howdy,

I've been using XAMPP on a Windows box (Same network as my laptop, different box) for a while now as a test machine for multiple web sites. Every time I set up a site, I make a number of changes to get it up and running and I'm trying to cut down. Each site currently gets:

1) A line in my Windows hosts file: 10.0.3.70 clientsub123.devbox.local
2) A directory on the server box ( \XAMPP\htdocs\clientsub123)
3) An edit in the \XAMPP\apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf file to add a VirtualHost section for clientsub123

So, the one I'm thinking I could eliminate here would be #3. Which leads to my question: Is there some way to set up wildcard subdomains AND have the server pull from the subdomain's matching folder automatically? So all I'd need to change is my hosts file and toss the files into the directory?

Thanks!

[JonB]

Uh - AFAIK - the basic answer is no.

In part, I believe that is the case because of how Apache works - make a change to a .conf file, for it to take effect, you have to restart Apache. (as best I know).

You could build a script to do all this - a graceful shutdown, file edit by parameter, restart service (although it would be a bit tougher on Windows than on *nix which has all the toys for this). OR learn a provisioning system for VPS's!

Good luck (cute idea) -