how to change urls to look like subdomains but function as a single domain?

Question

I have a Joomla! site hosted by Rochen, and am wondering whether it is possible for me to change the structure of urls as follows.

Currently my site (Joomla 3.8) has urls that look like this:

• www.mysite.com
• www.mysite.com/index.php/section1
• www.mysite.com/index.php/section2
• www.mysite.com/index.php/section3

I would like to change urls to look like this:

• www.mysite.com
• section1.mysite.com
• section2.mysite.com
• section3.mysite.com

I know how to set up subdomains on Rochen cPanel. Currently each of my subdomains point to the same document root (i.e. public_html), so that the main domain and each subdomain all operate off of a single Joomla! installation and a single database (as desired). The problem is that when I do, users have to log into each subdomain separately. Currently their username/password combinations work for each subdomain, but they have to repeat the logon process for each subdomain. I would prefer for a user to have to login only one time to gain access to the entirety of mysite.com. I guess what I want is to have urls that look like subdomains, but function like it's just one domain (one joomla! installation, one database, single logon).

Any advice on how to do this?

Answer 1

You can achieve what you need by using Virtual Domains extension.

It is free and it provides Multi-domain capability for Joomla without changing the Joomla core files and tables. Simply register any number of additional available domains/subdomains in the components backend and define their properties.

You can run different web sites from a single Joomla installation with specific templates, home page content and navigation.

You can select a template from VD's Backend for a specific domain. You can filter menu items, define domain specific languages and meta data. VD will create an accesslevel for each domain/subdomain. This will enable you to control all that content that can deal with access levels.

I have used it without any issues for quite some time and under every major J! version. It works just fine in latest Jooomla 3.8 under PHP 7. Highly recommended!