A domain name is like "airtrainingcorps.info". A subdomain is the bit before "airtrainingcorps.info". "www" is a commonly used subdomain - like "www.airtrainingcorps.info".
When you arrive at a subdomain like "007.airtrainingcorps.info", the server looks for 007 in a database and then sends you to another server where the site can be found, eg "http://freepages.somewhere-else.net/007squadron". This process takes the server less than a second.
Because the creator of this site (Steve Root) is a Civilian Instructor at his local Air Training Corps squadron. Given the task of promoting the squadron to encourage new cadets to join it was decided the squadron would benefit from a website. I then realised that almost all the most relevant ATC domain names were taken. I decided to register the remaining ones and make it so everyone in the ATC could benefit from an easy to remember domain name
I'm fortunate enough in that the business I own (shameless plug) has it's own dedicated internet server. I also know how to make servers do some clever things.
When you type a domain name into your web browser, your browser first makes a request from a 'domain name server' (DNS) to find out which computer that web site can be found. DNS is like an address book that converts mydomain.co.uk into a computer address like '10.20.30.40'.
The computer at '10.20.30.40' will then give you the web site you've asked for. Normally this is the web page at 'www.mydomain.co.uk'. I've made my server receive 'anything.airtrainingcorps.info' and when it arrives I've created some PHP Scripts with a MySQL database to process the request, instead of a give you a normal web page.
The server looks through it's database for a match, if it finds one it will send a command to you web browser to go to the matching web site at whereever it happens to be. If it doesn't find one, it will just say it didn't fine one.
You still can. The redirect is useful if you are using free web space and can't get hold of a suitable name. It also means that if
Perhaps. Unfortunately they don't have their own web server or web master/programmer. If you're wondering why I didn't volunteer to do it for them, I (and many others for other web related issues) did. Unfortunately/Fortunately their site is hosted on an MOD server and you need special clearence to get anywhere near creating computer code on it. Trust me, that's a good policy. I let very few people put code on my businesses web server in case they break something - and I wouldn't want to be responsible for breaking the raf.mod.uk domain :-)
Thanks for the thought, but I really don't need it at the moment. Put something into your local ATC squadron instead.