This section provides an overview of how to set up a system for serving multiple domains from a single Web server using the HomeDoor default home page server. See Appendix 1 for a complete, step-by-step example of how to set up HomeDoor.
What you need to get started: HomeDoor consists of an extension and an Admin application. HomeDoor requires an Ethernet-based IP network, system 7.1 or later and a Macintosh with at least 4MB of RAM. Additionally, if Open Transport is installed, it must be version 1.1 or later. HomeDoor Admin, as distributed in the downloadable and bundled versions, also requires HyperCard or HyperCard Player version 2.0 or later. A standalone version of HomeDoor Admin is available to registered users directly from Open Door Networks.
To actually serve default home pages, in addition to running HomeDoor, you must also have a Web server set up and running. Although HomeDoor can run on the same machine as the Web server, you may want to start out with the two products on separate machines when you are first testing out the system.
HomeDoor also requires a domain name server (DNS) to create the different domains it serves. This DNS can be run at your site or at your Internet service provider. Additionally, if the domains being created by the DNS and served by HomeDoor are to be accessed via the Internet and are not subdomains of an already-existing domain, these domains must be registered with the InterNIC before they will be accessible to the Internet. See Appendix 1 for details of registering domain names.
Before installing HomeDoor: HomeDoor requires a unique IP address for each default home page (or virtual domain) it is going to serve. Contact your network administrator to obtain a range of IP addresses for use by HomeDoor. Additionally, although you can temporarily create multiple default home pages using hard-coded IP addresses, you will probably want to assign different domain names to each of your default home pages. Assignment of domain names to addresses is also generally performed by your network administrator, using the DNS. Ask your network administrator to assign a different domain name to each IP address which you will be configuring into HomeDoor and to register those domain names with the InterNIC if necessary.
For purposes of this section, we're going to assume that you want to serve two new default home pages, one for www.companyX.com and one for www.companyY.com. You should thus start off by obtaining two IP addresses for HomeDoor. Let's say you get 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 from your network administrator. After obtaining these addresses, we'll assume you've had the domain name www.companyX.com assigned to address 10.0.0.1 and www.companyY.com to 10.0.0.2.
As an additional step at this point, you may also wish to create a directory on your Web server for each default home page that HomeDoor will be serving, and place the appropriate home page file into each directory. Alternately, you can just select a particular file or directory later on. For our example, we'll assume you've created directories called "companyX" and "companyY" on your Web server at www.yourwebserver.com, and placed a file named default.html in each of these directories (we're also assuming that default.html is the name configured into your Web server to indicate the default page for any directory, which is usually the case on Mac Web servers).
Installing HomeDoor: To install HomeDoor for the first time, simply drop the HomeDoor extension into the system folder of the Mac you'll be using as the default home page server and run the HomeDoor Admin application on that Mac. If you are upgrading from a previous version of HomeDoor, see "If you're upgrading from a previous version" below.
Configuring HomeDoor: After running HomeDoor Admin, enter the first and last IP addresses to be used by HomeDoor for serving default home pages (10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 in our example).
You may want to be sure that there are a few extra addresses available in the range you've obtained, so you don't have to go back and renumber everything later.
The principal part of HomeDoor configuration consists of entering URLs for addresses in HomeDoor's address range. The URL you enter for a particular address needs to be the full URL of the actual Web page you want to be brought up when an access is made to the domain name associated with that address. For instance, in our example http://www.yourwebserver.com/companyX/ for 10.0.0.1 and http//www.yourwebserver.com/companyY/ for 10.0.0.2. As indicated in the Admin Reference section, the URL needs to specify a directory (ending with a slash) if you will be using HomeDoor to implement a virtual domain at the associated address . Also, as indicated in the Extension Reference section, you may wish to have your network administrator create a DNS alias to your actual Web server, such as www2.companyX.com (instead of www.yourwebserver.com), so that Web browsers' "location" fields display the original domain name. In this case, you would use the alias within the URL you configure into HomeDoor (http://www2.companyX.com/companyX/).
Once you have entered the URLs for each address in HomeDoor's range for which you want it to serve home pages, hit the "Write" button to write out the information to the HomeDoor extension.
Activitating HomeDoor: After initial installation and configuration, simply restart your Macintosh to activate HomeDoor. You should see the HomeDoor extension icon displayed at start up. If you do not see the icon, or if you see the icon with a red "X" through it, consult the Troubleshooting section. If HomeDoor loads successfully, it will be active until you turn it off as specified in the Admin Reference section.
While running, HomeDoor will normally log accesses to any pages it serves. Logging can be disabled through use of the logging buttons in HomeDoor Admin. See the Reference sections for details.
If you're upgrading from a previous version: If you're upgrading HomeDoor from a previous version, and wish to maintain your previous configuration information, use the following procedure:
(1) Before copying the new HomeDoor extension into your system folder, with the old extension still installed, run the new HomeDoor Admin.
(2) When asked, answer "Yes" to the question about keeping your previous extension data. Your previous configuration will then be loaded into HomeDoor Admin.
(3) With HomeDoor Admin still running, replace the previous HomeDoor extension with the new one, as instructed.
(4) Hit the "Write" button to write out the configuraiton to the new extension.
(5) Restart the Mac to load the new version of HomeDoor.
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