Subdirectories being blocked by .htaccess / Admin Tools

Question

I am running a Joomla site and managing the dev environment using cPanel. I have set up a subdomain which I will be building the new version of the website in like so — dev.somewebsite.com (with the directory being called _dev)

I have been told that the current .htaccess may cause issues with the subdomain and that I would most likely need to edit it.

I currently am unable to visit dev.somewebsite.com in my browser as Chrome gives the following message:

server DNS address could not be found

I've been into Admin Tools and looked under Exceptions, then Allow direct access, including .php files, to these directories and added _dev underneath what was there already

Alas, that didn't work.

Is there another way I can get this working?

Answer 1

The "server DNS address could not be found" message has nothing to do with the .htaccess. This simply means that the subdomain can not be resolved.

You need to check your DNS setup - or maybe simply wait for the new DNS to propagate. You could also edit your computer's hosts file to create a local record for this subdomain to point at your server's IP. This is a google search about editing hosts file, which will give you some ground about what it is and how to use it.

If it is a matter of DNS setup, then maybe it's a good idea to ask your hosting provider for help on this, if you can't manage it. Actually, when creating subdomains in cPanel the required DNS records for it, are usually auto-created. So this might be something misconfigured on cPanel.

As for the .htaccess itself - if it will work or not on a subdomain - it depends on what directives your .htaccess has. However note that if the _dev directory is not under the same directory as your main website, where you have your main .htaccess file, then the latter will have no impact on _dev directory.

In any case, your _dev site will need its own .htaccess - if you want/need to have one - so do not mix directives on the main (live) .htaccess for both the 2 sites.