I'm trying to improve my skills in PHP by creating my own CMS infrastructure, probably based on a lightweight framework like FuelPHP.
Because I think it's better to have a goal, I would like to use this opportunity to build a multi site CMS.
It would be a CMS for a game.
Basically, here the workflow:
Somebody create an account on the main site (http://www.mainsite.com), then create a site for his server (http://my-beautiful-server.mainsite.com). People from his server would then come to the subdomain and register to interact with the forum, the gallery, updating their account, etc.
Is using subdomains a correct approach ?
If I use a wildcard for my DNS, how must the vhost be configured to redirect on the correct folder based on the subdomain ? Can I not use a folder system for each site and use only one app to handle everything by just "passing" the subdomain as a variable to the app to tell it on which site I am ? Is it reliable ?
If in the future I want to propose custom domain names, is it possible with this approach ? I would only need to handle domain name registering myself and add a vhost configuration to redirect on the correct folder ?
I'm a little lost on the correct and most robust approach.
Today I have the domain name and I will take a little VPS for testing.
Thanks a lot for any help to guide me in the good direction and sorry for my broken english, I had trouble finding ressources on the Internet.