HomeDoor 2.0 User's Guide

Appendixes

 

Registering Domain Names

Before a domain name will be accessible on the Internet, you must first register the name with InterNIC (NIC stands for Network Information Center), or the registration authority for your country. Details of this procedure are given in Chapter 9 of Providing Internet Services via the Mac OS and Chapter 4 of Getting Your Apple Internet Server Online. Briefly, the process is:

You will be notified via e-mail when the registration is complete. The person assigned as Billing Contact will be sent an invoice for $100 within ten days of registration. This fee covers the first two years.

 

Registering Virtual Server Names with Search Engines

There are several issues relating to virtual servers and search engines:

There are techniques you can use to avoid these problems, one technique for each method of implementing virtual Web servers.

Redirection - Register a URL of the form "www2.companyX.com/companyX/".

Mapping - If you have chosen to always return an error page for unsupported browsers, those virtual servers will not be searchable by search engines that do not implement the host field. The default error-handling method or the optional method with the "home pages only" sub-option will work, but you must register a URL of the form "www.yourwebserver.com/companyX/", or alternatively, make a DNS alias to your "real" server and use that in the URL.

 

Setup Example: Browser-Independent Redirection

This example assumes you want to use redirection to implement virtual Web servers for company X and company Y. It also assumes you want the location field of the browser to not contain the "real" Web server's name when a virtual Web server is accessed. If you purchased HomeDoor as part of the Multi-domain Webmaster Suite, you should run Multi-domain DNS Assistant, which will take you through configuring your DNS step by step, and will automatically create the needed files, saving you considerable work. If you did not purchase HomeDoor as part of the Multi-domain Webmaster Suite, as a HomeDoor user you can purchase the Suite at a special price. Contact Open Door Networks for ordering information.

We assume that you have chosen domain names of companyX.com and companyY.com, and host names of www.companyX.com and www.companyY.com. The actual Web server's host name is assumed to be www.yourwebserver.com at address 10.0.0.254. This example further assumes that you have registered the domain names yourwebserver.com, companyX.com and companyY.com with the InterNIC. Details on how to register domain names are in Registering Domain Names above. You only need to register these domain names if your pages are going to be accessed across the Internet. If your pages will only be accessed locally, domain name registration is not required.

Step 1. Acquire additional IP addresses for your virtual Web servers. Although these addresses do not have to be consecutive, they do have to be within a range of 255 addresses from each other. We'll assume the addresses you are given are 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2. These addresses must be valid for the network on which the HomeDoor Macintosh will be placed.

Step 2. Configure your DNS to point the name www.companyX.com to the address 10.0.0.1 and www.companyY.com to 10.0.0.2. The files CompanyXHosts.txt and CompanyYHosts.txt are sample hosts files which you could use to do this configuration. You should first look at the file HomeDoorSampleHosts.txt, which is assumed to be the base host file, normally called simply "hosts" . This file contains general comments on the format of a DNS hosts file.

Step 3. Configure your DNS with DNS aliases to your actual Web server. These aliases, which are not strictly necessary, are used so that the "location" field, displayed in many Web browsers, shows the original domain name as opposed to your actual server's domain name. Specifically, configure your DNS so that www2.companyX.com and www2.companyY.com are both aliases to www.yourwebserver.com. See the CNAME statements in the sample hosts files for details.

Step 4. If desired, configure your DNS with mail host information for the CompanyX and CompanyY virtual domains. This step is only necessary if you will be providing mail service to these virtual domains and wish to be able to have mail addresses of the form name@CompanyX.com. You will also need to configure your mail server to accept mail to these domains, and to use a multi-domain mail product like MailDoor.

Step 5. Configure reverse lookup information into your DNS. Reverse lookup information, as shown in the ReverseZones.txt file, is used to map IP addresses back to domain names. This step is in no way necessary, and in fact will only work if you are the only one providing primary name service for your domain. If your ISP is providing any primary name service for your domain, they must handle reverse lookup information.

Step 6. Create folders on your Web server for the company X and company Y virtual Web servers. We'll assume you create folders called CompanyX and CompanyY, respectively, at the root of your Web server. Create files called default.html (or whatever your server's default home page file name is) within each of these directories. These files are the default home pages for the virtual Web servers. Create any other files or directories within these directories that you wish to appear in the virtual Web servers.

Step 7. Configure HomeDoor with the redirection information. Specifically, in the Redirection window, the HomeDoor address range should be 10.0.0.1 to 10.0.0.2, with 10.0.0.1 redirected to http://www2.companyX.com/companyX/ and 10.0.0.2 redirected to http://www2.companyY.com/companyY/. Remember that the www2's have been configured to be DNS aliases to your actual Web server.

Step 8. Save the HomeDoor information. Be sure to restart the Macintosh if you have not done so since installing HomeDoor. The virtual domains www.companyX.com and www.companyY.com should now be active. Be sure to check them from a Macintosh other than the one on which HomeDoor is running.

 

Setup Example: Host Field Mapping

This example assumes you want to use host field mapping to implement virtual Web servers for company X and company Y.

We assume that you have chosen domain names of companyX.com and companyY.com, and host names of www.companyX.com and www.companyY.com. The actual Web server's host name is assumed to be www.yourwebserver.com at address 10.0.0.254. This example further assumes that you have registered the domain names yourwebserver.com, companyX.com and companyY.com with the InterNIC. Details on how to register domain names are in Registering Domain Names above. You only need to register these domain names if your pages are going to be accessed across the Internet. If your pages will only be accessed locally, domain name registration is not required.

Step 1. Configure your DNS to point the names www.companyX.com and www.companyY.com to 10.0.0.254 (the actual Web server's address).

Step 2. Create folders on your Web server for the CompanyX and CompanyY virtual Web servers. We'll assume you create folders called companyX and companyY, respectively, at the root of your Web server. Create files called default.html (or whatever your server's default home page file name is) within each of these directories. These files are the default home pages for the domains. Create any other files or directories within these directories that you wish to appear in the virtual domains.

Step 3. Configure HomeDoor by associating host names with folder names. In our example, in the Mapping window of HomeDoor Admin associate the pathname "/companyX" in the "Pathname to Insert" column with the host name "www.companyX.com" in the "Host Name" column, and likewise for "/companyY" and "www.companyY.com".

Step 4. Configure error handling. To get started, the default methods will suffice. For more detailed information, see the Error Configuration section of the Admin Reference.

 

Changing Methods

Redirection to Mapping: To change a virtual Web server from the original browser-independent redirection method to the new host field mapping method, do the following steps:

  1. Find the DNS zone file for the domain associated with the virtual server. In that file, make a list of all the entries which point to the HomeDoor-specific address you have been using for that server. There will usually just be one such entry, of the form www.companyX.com. In some cases, you may have made an alias (CNAME) to the HomeDoor address as well (for instance companyX.com in addition to www.companyX.com) The zone file may also have an entry of the form www2.companyX.com, but this entry should be pointing to your "real" server, not to the HomeDoor address. DO NOT INCLUDE WWW2 ALIASES IN THE LIST - only list entries which point to the HomeDoor address for the virtual server.

  2. Change all entries which point to the HomeDoor address for the virtual server to point to your "real" server instead. If you have an entry of the form www2.companyX.com, that entry should already be pointing to your "real" server, and should require no modification. Do not delete any entries. Do not save your changes yet.

  3. Enter the host name(s) from your list in step 1 (such as www.companyX.com) into the Mapping window of HomeDoor Admin, associating the pathname to the virtual server's folder with each of them (usually "/companyX"). YOU SHOULD NOT MAKE AN ENTRY FOR ANY WWW2 ALIAS. Save the changes.

  4. Save your DNS changes and restart your DNS if necessary. Remember that DNS entries are cached by end-user machines and by intermediate DNS's throughout the Internet. For this reason, your changes may not take effect for up to a day, so be sure to KEEP THE REDIRECTION ENTRY in HomeDoor for at least that period of time. If you wish to test your change immediately, you will need to go to a machine which is configured to use your DNS and restart that machine.

  5. If you have changed the Mapping error-handling preferences from the defaults, you may have to make additional changes, as indicated in the Error Configuration: Host not Found in Host List section of the Admin Reference.

Mapping to Redirection: To change a virtual Web server from the host field mapping method to the old browser-independent redirection method, do the following steps:

  1. Add the entry to Admin's Redirection window, as described in the Adding a Server Entry section of the Admin Reference.

  2. Change the DNS entry to use the new IP address. See "Browser-Independent Redirection Method" in the Pre-Configuration Tasks section of Getting Started.

  3. After several days, delete the virtual server's entry in the HomeDoor Admin Mapping window. As mentioned in the above section, due to DNS caching the changes in step 2 may not take effect for all users for a few days.

 

Log File Format

For redirection only, HomeDoor creates a log file which is useful for determining the number of visits to a virtual site. The HomeDoor log file is named HomeDoor Log and is stored in the Preferences folder within the system folder on the machine where the HomeDoor extension is installed. The log file is stored in text format, and can be processed by the LogDoor Multi-domain Web Site Monitor or read by any word processor. The file consists of one line for each log entry. Each entry consists of a number of fields, with each field delimited by a tab.

The first two fields in every HomeDoor log entry are always the date and time of the entry. The date is always in mm/dd/yy format, with two digits each for the month, day and year. The time is always in 24 hour format hh:mm:ss, with two digits each for the hour, minute and second.

HomeDoor log entries can be either status entries or access entries. In a status entry, the date and time fields are followed by a status information field. The status information field simply describes a significant event such as HomeDoor's loading or starting up or an error of some sort. Status entries should be self-explanatory. An example status entry is shown below:

04/08/96 09:57:46 A new HomeDoor configuration has been loaded.

Access entries are in a format which is meant to be compatible with programs which read and process WebSTAR log files. Specifically, the date and time are followed, in order, by status, IP address and URL fields.

Status - the status in HomeDoor access entries is always OK. This field is included for compatibility with WebSTAR log processing programs, and for future use.

04/08/96 09:58:00 OK 198.68.10.4 http://www2.companyX.com/companyX/file

In general, if HomeDoor logging is enabled, there will be one log file entry for each access made through HomeDoor's redirection method. Accesses made to pages not served by HomeDoor (such as those through relative URLs) will not be logged, nor will pages served through host field mapping. Under certain rare conditions involving retransmissions, there may be more than one log file entry for a particular access. Multiple consecutive log entries from the same IP address and for the same URL may indicate a network reliability problem.

 

Browsers Not Supporting the HTTP 1.1 Host Field

Below is a partial list of browsers known to not support the HTTP 1.1 "host" field. If you need HomeDoor host field mapping to support a browser on this list, you must use HomeDoor's browser-independent redirection technique, as opposed to its host field mapping technique. A current list is available from Open Door Networks.

This list was built by monitoring hits to one of the Web servers used by Open Door Networks to host customer pages for a three day period, between noon December 29, 1996 and noon January 1, 1997. Since we are a Web provider hosting Web sites for a wide range of customers, we believe this list to be fairly representative, although we do not claim that this is a scientific study.

Summary:

Of over 34,000 total hits to the server, 6482, or 19% did not contain the Host field. Of those, the most popular browsers were:

The Complete List:

Browser Hits
AIR_Mosaic(16 bit)/v1.00.198.07 27
Amiga-AWeb/1.2 19
aolbrowser/1.1 InterCon-Web-Library/1.2 (Macintosh; 68K) via proxy gateway CERN-HTTPD/3.0 libwww/2.17 51
ArchitextSpider 15
Enhanced_Mosaic/2.01 Mac_68000 PSI/1 23
Enhanced_Mosaic/2.01a4 Win32 IBM/1 15
IBM-WebExplorer-DLL/v1.1b 212
InterGO/1.5 9
IWENG/1.2.000 via proxy gateway CERN-HTTPD/3.0 libwww/2.17 441
Lotus-Notes/4.1 ( Windows-NT Server ) 14
Lynx 2.4-FM libwww-FM/2.14 12
Lynx/2.3.7 BETA libwww/2.14 12
MacWeb/1.00ALPHA3.2 libwww/2.17 4
Microsoft Internet Explorer/4.40.308 (Windows 95) 142
Mozilla/1.0N (Macintosh) 29
Mozilla/1.0N (Windows) 110
Mozilla/1.1 (Macintosh; U; 68K) 5
Mozilla/1.12(Macintosh; I; 68K) 42
Mozilla/1.1N (Macintosh; I; 68K) 108
Mozilla/1.1N (Windows; I; 16bit) 183
Mozilla/1.1N (X11; I; IRIX 5.3 IP22) via Harvest Cache version 2.1pl1 15
Mozilla/1.1PE (Windows; I; 16bit) 15
Mozilla/1.2 (Windows; I; 16bit) 27
Mozilla/1.22 (compatible; MSIE 2.0; Windows 3.1) 1055
Mozilla/1.22 (compatible; Quarterdeck Mosaic Version 2.02.012 (Mar 23 1996)/Windows/Export) 53
Mozilla/1.22 (Windows; I; 16bit) 838
Mozilla/1.2N (Windows; I; 16bit) 120
Mozilla/2.0 (Compatible; AOL-IWENG 3.0; Win16) 1143
Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 2.1; Windows 3.1) 433
Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; PlanetWeb/1.011 Golden; SEGA Saturn; TV; 640,480) 10
Mozilla/2.10.28bS Win16 FTP Software/Spyglass/28bS 12
NETCOMplete/3.0 18
NetCruiser/V2.1.1 9
NetJet/1.0 34
OmniWeb/1.0 libwww/2.16pre2 6
PRODIGY-WB/3.1d 115
Quarterdeck Mosaic Version 1.01 5
Reflection/6.10 (Win95; I; 4.0) 20
SPRY_Mosaic/v7.36 (Windows 16-bit) SPRY_package/v4.00 42
Spyglass_Mosaic/2.10 Win32 Spyglass/7 32
WebAuto/2.00 (Win95; I) 9
WebChat URL-Cache Server 54
   
Others 944


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