How to serve multiple domains
Most people serve more than one
domain on their Slice(s).
Whether for different domain
names or different subdomains of the same domain, the procedure is the same.
Question
I am often asked by people how
to use their Slice to serve multiple domains.
The question often surprises me as
they may have setup their Slice, installed a web server (Apache, Nginx, etc)
and even created a virtual host to serve their main domain.
Don't get me wrong, the question
itself is good (I like questions as it makes me feel useful!), but the answer
is always so simple:
Create another vhost.
Outline
There may not be a great deal I
can add to the answer but let me outline the process of setting up a Slice and
creating a virtual host (I won't go into any details of the installation and
creation process - please see the relevant articles for detailed help).
When your Slice is first created
it is a minimal Linux install (it doesn't matter what OS you choose).
You SSH into the Slice and
update and secure it.
Then you install your preferred
web server (Apache, Nginx, Litespeed, etc).
Then the detailed stuff begins.
It doesn't matter if your site is PHP based or Rails based or something else
entirely. You install the language and framework basics (say Ruby and rubygems
or mod_php and so on).
Once that is all done, you come
to the part that allows you to server your site: creating virtual hosts.
Procedure
Greatly simplified the procedure
for serving a website is as follows:
A browser send a request to your
Slice IP asking for the contents of 'domain.com' (your domain name).
Your web server jumps into
action and says 'yes! I have something for you'. The web server does its
'thing' and serves up an http representation of your site which is sent to the
browser.
The browser then translates the
http and parses it to a human form of the web site (something like this one).
All jolly good but how does your
web server know what to send?
Virtual Hosts
This is where name based virtual
hosts come in.
One of the first lines in any
virtual host contains the domain name that is related to the vhost.
Something like this for Apache:
ServerName
domain1.com
ServerAlias www.domain1.com
and something like this for
Nginx:
server
{
server_name
www.domain1.com;
rewrite ^/(.*) http://domain1.com/$1
permanent;
Each one starts slightly
differently but the same principle applies - that particular virtual host will
respond to queries for 'domain1.com' and 'www.domain1.com'.
Multiple domains
So, to serve different content
for different domains is as simple as adding another virtual host.
Let's say you have a subdomain
called 'blog.domain1.com' serving a blog (I know, shocking originality!).
The basic creation process would
be to create a folder in your public_html folder with the relevant files (let's
say a Wordpress install).
A virtual host would be created
with the server_name or ServerName as 'blog.domain1.com' which would be
configured to point to the blog files and folders in your public_html folder.
Done.
Language and frameworks
It doesn't matter what language
or framework your domain uses.
To serve multiple Rails
applications for example requires the same setup for each application.
Of course, there would be some
differences such as port numbers for the mongrel or thin instances. Virtual
hosts can't share ports.
For example, you may create a
mongrel cluster to run from port 8000 - 8002 for one domain and another running
from 8010 - 8012 for your blog and so on.
