random-host.com

Ever wanted to use wildcard subdomains with Microsoft Internet Information Services? You might have realized by now that this is actually not possible using only IIS as neither IIS 6 nor IIS 7 support the *.example.com notation.

The key to success is ISAPI_Rewrite, a third party ISAPI extension that brings mod_rewrite functionality to IIS. The latest version ISAPI_Rewrite 3 is compatible with Apache's mod_rewrite URL rewriting module which means that you can use the same rules you would use when hosting on Apache 2.

ISAPI_Rewrite Lite is available for free, but usually requires a more complex configuration as it does not support parsing of .htaccess files as the full version does. In this case, it doesn't matter since the following directions can either be placed inside the global configuration or inside an .htaccess file in your IIS default web.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.+)\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [P,NC,QSA]

This uses the built-in ISAPI_Rewrite proxy to redirect all subdomains of example.com transparently to www.example.com. Your visitor will still see subdomain.example.com in his browser's address bar, just as if the subdomain was configured in the web that hosts www.example.com.

Now, for serving different contents from TYPO3, you need to tweak your configuration to make TYPO3 handle the HTTP_FORWARDED_HOST header sent by ISAPI_Rewrite.

To do this, you have to add the following lines to localconf.php:

$TYPO3_CONF_VARS['SYS']['reverseProxyIP'] = 'YOUR_SERVER_IP';
$TYPO3_CONF_VARS['SYS']['reverseProxyHeaderMultiValue'] = 'last';

This allows TYPO3 to handle proxy requests by ISAPI_Rewrite correctly.

You have to replace "YOUR_SERVER_IP" in the example above with the IP address of the server that is running ISAPI_Rewrite. This should normally be the IP address of the server that hosts example.com.

Once you did that, you can set up domains in TYPO3 as usual and ISAPI_Rewrite will take care of all the rest. No additional configuration is required.

Related Link: ISAPI_Rewrite 3

If you are in the same situation like I was for a few months now and you get a "Code: 80048823" error when trying to sign in to Games for Windows LIVE on your Windows PC with your correct username and password, this article might contain the solution you are looking for.

If you were wise enough to choose a long (> 10 characters) and cryptic password so script kiddies can't just take over your LIVE account, Microsoft's Games for Windows LIVE client simply can't handle your password and will give you meaningless error messages.

Login to your LIVE account through https://login.live.com and change your password to something that is no longer than 10 characters.

There you go. That's it. You should be able to login again.

Asking for credit card information while not supporting secure passwords. Way to go Microsoft.

I'm giving up. I spent the last few hours trying to login to Games for Windows LIVE. If you don't know what this is:

Games for Windows LIVE is Microsoft's attempt to compete with Valve's Steam platform and their "achievements" by bringing their XBOX Live platform to the PC.

The last time I managed to login to Games for Windows LIVE, I couldn't even have a custom profile picture without signing up for an expensive premium membership. On Steam, you get this for free.

But that's not enough. When you play a game which supports Games for Windows LIVE and you have this thing running in the background, it will most likely create a new player profile and all your previous savegames will be gone. If you are lucky, you "just" have to manually copy all your savegames to the new profile and it might work.

Games for Windows LIVE also grants you access to "downloadable content" (DLC) for games such as Fallout 3 and Mass Effect. I'm buying my games on Steam, including those that support Games for Windows Live. I can't see why I have to buy DLC through Games for Windows LIVE when using Steam. As a matter of course, the otherwise useless Games for Windows LIVE client has to run in the background for DLC to work. This means that people like me who bought their game on Steam need to have two programs running in the background to run a computer game.

But since all I get when logging in is "Code: 80048823", I can't use any of the DLC. I changed my password since their support websites which are spread across at least 20 different domains told me to do so. While looking for information regarding "Code: 80048823" on different Microsoft websites, I encountered several redirections, at least one "500 Internal server error", one endless redirect loop and a lot of "404 File not found" errors.

Talking about downloadable content, it's certainly worth mentioning that the only currency supported by Games for Windows LIVE is Microsoft Points. You can buy Microsoft Points in a store in the form of a points card (I've yet to find a store here in Germany where they sell those) or you can use a credit card. That's it. If you don't have a credit card (not that uncommon here in Germany) and you can't find a store, you are out of luck.

That's the reason why there are online shops which sell the scanned codes from the cards. I was lucky enough to find a shop which accepts payment through PayPal and direct debit.

I therefore come to the conclusion thatGames for Windows LIVE fails.

Update: The solution to this problem can be found here: Games for Windows LIVE "Code: 80048823" solved