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Alternative website addresses
Web servers can be configured in a variety of ways to respond
to varying user needs. One common part of web server configuration
is the mapping of web addresses to either different IP addresses
(often for either load balancing or localization issues), or multiple
web addresses pointing to a single IP address. The following common
web server configurations involve URL mapping:
- Multiple DNS Aliasing
- Occurs when two or more domain name server
(DNS) aliases point to a single server (for our purposes, a single
server consists of a single IP address). When connecting to a server
configured with multiple DNS aliases, Contribute views the defined
website and the aliases as separate websites, even though they are
the same from the users’ perspective.
For example, if your
server hosts the website www.carsonline.com, and you set up two
additional web addresses that refer to that same website (for example, www.cars.com
and www.mycars.com), you must configure Contribute to recognize
these separate web addresses as the same website.
- Virtual Server Configurations
- Have two
or more DNS aliases pointing to the same server, but users view
them as different websites. When a server configured in this way
receives a request to retrieve a web page, it serves different pages depending
on the address used in the request. There are two types of virtual server
configurations:
DNS-based virtual servers use a single
IP address that has two or more DNS aliases pointing to that address.
In this configuration, the web server differentiates the page request
based on the web address, serving different pages to the different
addresses.
IP-based virtual servers use multiple IP addresses to differentiate
web servers.
A common use of virtual server configurations
is to provide localized content to different geographic locations.
For example, a news website might provide different local information
to users viewing the website based on their location.
- Port numbers
- are often used
to further divide a domain name into multiple websites. Often this
is to allow the website to provide different software functionality
based on a port that may be listening for incoming requests.
A
web address that uses a different port number is considered to be
a different website. However, this is not always the case. As with
web server configurations using multiple DNS aliases, it’s important
that you map host names using different port numbers to the correct
website.
For example, if your organization’s website can be
accessed through two different web addresses differentiated by port
numbers, you must add these web addresses to the Alternate addresses
field. In this example, assume that your organization maintains
the following web addresses:
www.cars.com
www.cars.com:8080
Both
these web addresses point to the same website, with the exception
that those sites using port number 8080 read the browser’s cookie
file to check whether the visitor is a new or returning user. If
the user is already registered, the website appears without prompting
for registration. If a user is new, a dialog box appears requesting
the user to register to gain access to the website.
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