On Tuesday 20 April 2004 06:59 am, Martin McCormick wrote:

> I occasionally get a client who has me set up a DNS entry to a
> given web site and then is expecting customers to see their home page
> when, in fact, all they get is the home page of the web site. The
> problem is that the server does not evaluate the URL being received
> in order to determine what page to give to the connecting customer.

All DNS can do is connect a name with an IP#.

> Is there a name for this particular configuration of a web
> server?

Virtual hosting ? That's what I'd call it.

> In some cases, the web server in question is out-sourced to
> Heaven only knows where and the more people involved, the less likely
> it is that we get a satisfactory outcome. What should the clients be
> asking for or specifically looking for when they pick a site to host
> their web page and want customers to see only that page and not some
> ISP main page with 250 links to everything in the world with their
> link buried three screens down near the bottom?

Then they need to get commercial webhosting from a company that offers
it.

For example, if your client's domain is hosted at:

[url]http://www.example.com/users/~joe[/url]

or even

[url]http://www.example.com/joe[/url]

Then they can't just go out and buy a domain:

joeswebsite.com

and have you point the DNS to the same site as [url]www.example.com,[/url] and
expect it to work.

Well, they can expect it, but it still won't work.

You can offer them "site forwarding" and set up your webserver to
forward requests to /http://www.joeswebsite.com to
[url]http://www.example.com/joe,[/url] but then your client's visitors will still
see [url]Http://www.example.com/joe[/url] in their browser.

Or you can set up "frame forwarding"; you'd host an empty frame for them
at [url]www.joeswebsite.com[/url] and set up the html to show the empty frame and
then whatever is at [url]www.example.com/joe.[/url]

Of course, these days when you can find commercial shared webhosting on
the Internet for as low as $5/month, I'm not sure where the value added
is.

Jeff
--
Jeff Lasman, nobaloney.net, P. O. Box 52672, Riverside, CA 92517 US
Professional Internet Services & Support / Consulting / Colocation
Our blists address used on lists is for list email only
Phone +1 909 324-9706, or see: "http://www.nobaloney.net/contactus.html"