Third-Party Applications and Aptuitiv

We sometimes get asked if we can host a third-party applications (like Wordpress) or custom PHP, .NET, CGI or Perl scripts alongside the Aptuitiv CMS. The short answer is no, but here is the long answer.

Why no third-party code

First off, let's define third-party code. In this case we're referring to PHP, .NET, CGI or Perl code only. You can use whatever third-party Javascript or CSS that you want.

We used to allow third-party applications but we got burned. A client's site got hacked due to security issues in the third-party code and it wreaked havoc across multiple sites.

Our goal is to maintain a reliable, robust hosting environment for our client's sites that are powered by Aptuitiv. It's much more challenging to do that when there is unknown custom or third-party PHP, .NET, CGI or Perl code running on the site. If any of that code has performance or security issues then other sites could be affected. For that reason we have decided to not allow any custom or third-party PHP, .NET, CGI or Perl code on the same website that is powered by Aptuitiv. 

So what can I do?

If you really need to have some third-party code or some custom code on your website then what we can offer is to host that code for you on a subdomain. 

With each Aptuitiv site that is on the Basic or higher version we are offering free hosting for a subdomain. That free account will include 100MB of space and one MySQL database. If you need more resources than that then we can offer one of our regular website hosting plans at half price.

We host non-Aptuitiv websites in a completely separate environment from our Aptuitiv-powered websites. 

But I need this code to live on a page on my actual website?

If you need the custom code to be a page on your site there are still multiple valid ways that you can accomplish the same thing with a subdomain. 

  • Use an iframe to embed the subdomain page within a page on your Aptuitiv website.
  • Use AJAX and Javascript to communicate with the sub domain.
  • Copy the HTML, CSS and images to the subdomain to create pages that match the look of your main website.

What is a subdomain and how do I get a subdomain?

A subdomain is really just a second website, with its own unique content, but there is no new domain name. Instead, you use an existing domain name and change the www to another name.

Lets say that you own "mydomain.com". Some example subdomains could be forums.mydomain.com, help.mydomain.com or stuff.mydomain.com.

To setup the subdomain address a new record needs to be added to the DNS for the domain. If we are managing your DNS just create a support ticket to let us know what you want to add.

Let's do this!

To get started please create a support ticket and let us know what you are wanting to do.