Is it really this hard? Multiple websites – same server

[jorban]

I have a wiki, blogs, webmail and web calendar all working just fantastically on my XServe (10.6.4). When you type in wiki.domain.com, you go to the XServe page where you can log in and access wikis, blogs, etc. We have webmail hosted via SSL so you need to access https… to get the mail link to work.

Aliases all work, external DNS all works, it’s just great.

Now…all I want to do…is set up a part of the server to host websites by kids and faculty (the wiki is great, but it can’t do some stuff that iWeb can do). We don’t want to get fancy with CSS style sheets, asp pages, SSIs, CGI scripts – yet – I’m just trying to get it set up to work correctly.

I have read the Web Tech Admin documentation but I guess I’m just too stupid to understand what it’s trying to tell me.

In Server Admin I have created a new site and pointed it to an entirely different folder on my XServe – different than that folder used by the Wiki, etc.

I have set an alias pointing “iweb.domain.com” to my XServe – the only server hosting web services.

When I type “iweb.domain.com” in Safari, I get the wiki login page. It seems to me that if I set the alias to point to the correct server (verified in dig and host) AND I have configured the site to use an entirely different file folder on the server…why am I getting the wiki page? (Yes, I reset EVERYTHING in Safari.)

In looking at how the wiki was configured (I didn’t do it – I inherited it) I see a Users folder with all my users listed. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a Users folder in the separate “iweb domain” folder I created with all the users’ names in there and in those folders all their website content would be stored? Sounds ideal but darned if I can figure out from the documentation how to do that. I thought it would be automatically set up when I set up the site but I guess not.

The second problem, of course, is how to “hook” iWeb on the kids’ laptops to point to that location on the server so that their site content can be uploaded.

Wouldn’t it be great to type something like “iWeb.domain.com/~username” and go right to the site?

Wouldn’t it be EVEN BETTER to type “username.domain.com” and go right to their site?

Look…I’m not opposed to reading how to do this if the material is reasonably intelligible. Of course being a one person IT shop that’s stretched to the gills, the only SPARE time I have to read is at home.

It doesn’t seem to me like this should be rocket science, but it sure looks like it is.

Is this something I can tackle in a reasonably short period of time or just tell the kids it can’t be done?

Thanks for any help

[bschappel]

I’m going to guess that this server is not accessible to the internet as a whole and assume you’re using private IP numbers. If that is true then I’d say the easiest way to solve this is to add another IP address to your server and have the iweb.domain.com be mapped to that IP in DNS with an A record.

To add an IP address to your server simply open the Network PrefPane and duplicate the Ethernet interface. Now just edit the duplicate Ethernet interface settings and change the IP address. (Another option – If you’re not using the other ethernet port on the Xserve you could assign the IP to that interface and plug that port into your network switch.)

In Server Admin go the the iweb.domain.com entry and set it to use the IP address on the duplicate interface. Apply the settings and (if memory serves) it should work.

The reason it was not working on the setup you had is that your web traffic is going over port 80. The wiki is already using port 80 on your existing address. Two sites can’t use the same port unless you enable virtual hosting in Apache. By giving the server another IP address you serve another site on port 80.

You can avoid the multiple IP addresses if you enable virtual hosting in the web server. This will examine the URL that is requested and serve different content based on the URL.

Hope this helps.

[jorban]

Yes that was helpful, but I’m close to figuring this out, after spending a day and 1/2 futzing around with it.

BTW the Apple documentation is pretty much worthless.

The original wiki was set up with wildcard characters and default settings. Worked great when we only had one site. Adding another site apparently was useless since the original configuration was defaulting everything back to itself.

So I had to set specific hostnames in the Sites section of Server Admin for the existing sites and then remove the wildcard Aliases for the existing sites (regular and SSL) in Server Admin –> Web –> Sites –> Aliases. The original hostname had been left blank.

Setting up an additional Site automatically sets up a virtual host for the new site so I can use the same port #, but the concept is similar to what you were talking about. Multiple sites require specific parameters.

The next thing is to enable FTP (or file sharing) so that kids can publish their sites from iWeb (not sure which to do right now).

Of course DNS needs to have a CNAME alias for the new subdomain pointing to the server.

Whew…seek and ye shall find (I guess).

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