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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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.
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 |