[MichaelLaws]

I am thinking of signing up as a reseller.

However i don't have a clue on how to do this...I am offering 3rd level domain such as newuser.mydomain.com to new customers.
How can i validate automatically whether a 3rd level domain
exists or not ?

For example the new customer need to know that newuser.mydomain.com is already taken but newuser2.mydomain.com is available.

Is there is any scripts to process this ?
Does C Panel deal with this ?

[dotcomguy]

Hi,

I was just wondering why you were thinking of reselling third level domains? There are many places out there that will host full domains for just as low? Why don't you resell domains and host them. Domains are not as expensive anymore and you can make additional cash. Even if you host them under the same account, they are almost like something.domain.com except technically each additional domain that you sell would be pointed to an individual folder within your account. It would look something like xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/~userfolder, but this is masked by the browser.

Does this help?

dotcomguy

[laidbak]

To answer one of your questions... Yes, Cpanel does handle subdomains (3rd level domains).

Technically, you can ping any domain to see if it is alive, however that isn't a true indication of if a subdomain is in use.
It could be that the domain/host is down at the time you ping it, so it would not respond.

On the other hand, whois only works for top level domains.

Your solution would be to use nslookup to actually find the nameserver of that domain, then use nslookup to switch to that nameserver and query for all the cnames.

[bright-byte]

Hi guys,
Just letting you know about a security problem I found in nslookup;

Source http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/4353/discussion/

Penguin nslookup.pl is a freely available, open source script for tracing network hops from a web server. It is distributed by Linux Directory.

The Penguin nslookup script does not adequately filter special characters. This makes it possible for a remote user to access specific files on the local system. The attacker may read files that are accessible by the web server. Additionally, the attacker may be able to execute arbitrary commands with the permissions of the web server by encapsulating commands in special characters.

[laidbak]

I prefer to use nslookup.exe or dig.

[MichaelLaws]

thanks dotcomguy but I have arrangements from a college run by my friend to offer ASP hosting to the students. They really don't need any domain name since they are using it for their educational purpose.

I am thinking of using companies that offer H-Sphere to the the
resellers. But i realized that you need to manually enter their
signup data because H-Sphere does not allow 3rd level domain
as a choice for signup. And the space allocated to each student is
small, around 15 MB. I am thinking of charging them on yearly basis.

Unfortunately i can't find any scripts that allow me to detect
redundant 3rd level domain name and automatic sign up process.

Do you think this is a good idea? Or will I incurr problems later
when the students need to test things such as database access
like MySQL from a 3rd level domain?

I need your input and ideas. Anything will do.

Originally posted by dotcomguy
Hi,

I was just wondering why you were thinking of reselling third level domains? There are many places out there that will host full domains for just as low? Why don't you resell domains and host them. Domains are not as expensive anymore and you can make additional cash. Even if you host them under the same account, they are almost like something.domain.com except technically each additional domain that you sell would be pointed to an individual folder within your account. It would look something like xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/~userfolder, but this is masked by the browser.

Does this help?

dotcomguy