I'm playing with mod_vhost_alias at the moment and have got as far as...

www.domain.com being served from /www/docs/domain.com/www/
subdom.domain.com from /www/docs/domain.com/subdom/

via VirtualDocumentRoot /www/docs/%2+/%1
So far so good....

Problem is that if someone enters http://domain.com we're stuck as we'd
normally want it to be served from the www. dir.

I can't work out whether I should be looking at URL rewriting or doing a
redirect ??
Or possibly something easier than that even?

Just as a bonus question :-) What sort of httpd.conf set up to most of the larger hosts tend to use for hosting 100's of domains? ie with respect to the above.

If you have not already check out:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/vhosts/mass.html
and
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_vhost_alias.html

You can try to link the domain.com to www.domain.com but I think you can use the following rule

VirtualDocumentRoot /www/docs/%1.0.%2.0/%3.0

I have not tried this though!...

VirtualDocumentRoot /www/docs/%1.0.%2.0/%3.0

That would be fine for a .com as
www.domain.com would be served from

/domain.com/www

But www.domain.co.uk would come from

/co.uk/domain ?

Is that correct or am I missing something?