I gave localhost an alias: 'myhost'. Entering 'myhost' in my address bar shows me /var/www/index.php. So far so good. Set up an apache virtual host on /var/www and called it 'myhost', then added three aliases: '*.myhost' '*.myhost.* 'myhost.*' the idea being that it would work like so:
myhost = site index/landing page/general stuff
user.myhost = general stuff specific to the user
myhost.topic = topical stuff not specific to a user
user.myhost.topic = topical stuff specific to a user
but all the data is loaded dynamically so the actual urls would be more like:
myhost/index.php?user=(empty or name of user)&host=myhost&app=(empty or topic)
I've spent two days trying to figure out the rewrite rules for this and no joy. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
EDIT: Also, do I have to add user1.myhost, user2.myhost, myhost.topic1, myhost.topic2, user1.myhost.topic1, user2.myhost.topic1, user1.myhost.topic2, user2.myhost.topic2, etc to my hosts file to make this work? If so, isn't there a better way?