Do I need a VPS package to do subdomain rewrites?

I’m trying to create some nifty blogging software with some clean and tidy URLS

I want to make it so if someone types in:

subdomain.domain.com, it will be received as domain.com/index.php?k=subdomain.

I have read many guides, but I can’t seem to get this to work and I know the rewrite module is on as I can make simple ones work.
Do I need to have access to the httpd.conf to make this happen? A few guides I have read said that I need to create a server alias for *.domain.com to domain.com… I think I might have this set up in cPanel already but I’m not sure and neither is my useless tech support I get for free from them.

Furthermore, eventually I would like to make it so that

subdomain.domain.com/somenumber/sometitle/somedate is received as:

domain.com/index.php?k=subdomain&article=somenumber

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

rev,

No. All you need is a server with mod_rewrite enabled and NOT being blocked by your host to use .htaccess.

What you want to do, though, is use subdomains rather than title (or some other CMS db field) and THAT requires wildcard subdomains (otherwise known as “Dynamically configured mass virtual hosting”). In other words, this is a DNS issue (even subdomains are handled by DNS as separate domains so each must be “registered” with your DNS - IF your host will allow it).

Regards,

DK