One of the features that are offered on the BLUEHILL.com NT Advantage Plus and BLUEHILL.com NT Advantage Pro is the ability to offer Virtual Hosting. Virtual Hosting allows you to point additional domain names to your server. These domain names can then point to specific directories on your server. This allows you to divide a single Web server into several smaller virtual hosts, which you can sell to other people. This is the same technology used by most large Web hosting companies.

For example, assume that Acme Industries, a prospective client, decides they would like to develop a Web presence for as little money as possible. Naturally, you have the perfect solution for them. You help Acme register the domain name “acme.com,” create a directory on your Web server, then point Acme’s domain to it. With Virtual Hosting, visitors to the acme.com Web site will see only the Acme portion of your Web server, and will never know that the files actually reside in a directory of your Web se rver.

Virtual Hosting is a service that we provide to you for a small fee. There is a setup fee of $35 per domain, plus a monthly charge of $7 per domain.

Despite some limitations, Virtual Hosting is intended to provide you with a way to offer prospective clients a low cost solution for Web hosting. You can sell them a virtual host for $20 a month, or whatever you decide. As their needs grow, you can upgrade them to their own BLUEHILL.com NT Solution, and make even more money as a BLUEHILL.com reseller.


18.1 How Virtual Hosting Works

Your BLUEHILL.com NT Solution has an IP address associated with its Web services, and you can point multiple domain names to that IP address. By default, your Web server considers your www/htdocs directory to be the Document Root—the directory that contains all of the files that are accessible through a Web browser.

You can request that we configure your Web server to associate each domain that is pointed to it with a unique document root directory outside of the main site’s document root directory. Therefore, when a request for a file comes to your Web server, a different file can be returned, depending on the domain name that was associated with the request.

Virtual Hosting can be provided not only for full domain names, but also for canonical domain names, as described in section 23.4.2. This means that you can provide virtual hosting not only for clients who have their own domain name, but for names like “client.yourdomain.com,” as well.

Before you decide whether to add virtual hosting to your Web server, we recommend you read the Virtual Hosting Limitations in section 23.2. To request that virtual hosts be added to your Web server, refer to section 23.3, Setting Up Virtual Hosting.


18.2 Virtual Hosting Limitations

Both the BLUEHILL.com NT Advantage Plus and the BLUEHILL.com NT Advantage Pro can provide virtual hosts with email accounts, email aliasing, customized activity logging, Microsoft FrontPage 2000 support, CGI-BIN capabilities, and more.

Virtual Hosting is provided to help you give customers a “foot-in-the-door” Web hosting option. We realize that not all of your customers will be ready for their own BLUEHILL.com NT Solution when they start out, and Virtual Hosting provides a nice solution for them. As your clients’ needs grow, we hope that you will become a BLUEHILL.com Reseller and resell them their own BLUEHILL.com NT Solution.

There are a few limitations to Virtual Hosting that you should be aware of before offering this service to your clients:

• Your Web server is designed to handle a small to medium hit load (under 100,000 hits a day). This includes all of the Web sites hosted on your BLUEHILL.com NT Solution – not just your primary one. If a Web server begins to receive over 100,000 hits per day, the quality of your Web service will begin to be affected.

• If your Web server begins to receive a large amount of traffic, you should reduce the number of virtual hosts on the Virtual Server by either upgrading the heavily trafficked virtual hosts to its own Virtual Server or by moving some virtual hosts to a less busy Virtual Server.

• Virtual Hosting was made possible by the introduction of HTTP/1.1. In order to view Virtual Hosts you must have a browser that is HTTP/1.1 compliant. Generally speaking, most standard Web browsers support Virtual Hosts. Netscape Navigator 2.0+ and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 3.0+ will view your Virtual Hosts fine. Any other browser that is HTTP/1.1 compliant should also be able to access your Virtual Hosts.

• If your clients are using an older browser, which is not HTTP/1.1 compliant, they will not be able to view their virtually hosted sites. However, considering that together Netscape and MSIE have 90-95% of the market share, this usually isn’t a problem. The small number of non-compliant Web browsers will display your primary Web site regardless of which domain is requested.

• Some search engines and “Web-crawler” spiders, which do not support the HTTP/1.1 protocol, will not be able to index your Virtual Hosts’ Web sites. Most major search engines do not have this problem, but you should be aware that there are some out there that do.

• To ensure the best possible performance for your Web server, we recommend that you limit the Virtual Hosts on both the BLUEHILL.com NT Advantage Plus and BLUEHILL.com NT Advantage Pro from 5 to 10 depending on the quota. These limits will help manage load-balancing efforts on your Web server and ensure that your Web server runs as efficiently as possible.

• Anonymous FTP accounts are not available for virtually hosted domains on the NT servers.

• Although the BLUEHILL.com NT Advantage and Starter can have multiple domains pointed to it, all domains must point to the same document root.

To set up a virtual host on your Web server, you must follow two basic steps. It is important to follow these steps in order to avoid potential problems for your customers.

Step 1: Register the Domain Name

The first thing that you should do when setting up a virtual host is to ensure that the domain name for the virtual host is properly registered. In some cases, you may need to help the client register the domain name.

In other cases, your potential client may already own the domain name, and may be hosting the domain on another provider’s system. In such situations, you will need to assist the client in modifying the DNS information for their domain name, so that th e BLUEHILL.com name servers become authoritative for the domain.

In either case, it is important that the domain name be properly registered and, if possible, that the BLUEHILL.com name servers be authoritative for the domain. Complete information on registering domain names and modifying DNS information can be found in Chapter 22 of this guide. If you are interested in offering Virtual Hosting on your Web server, you should study Chapter 22 thoroughly to familiarize yourself with DNS terminology and procedures.

Step 2: Request the DNS Addition [Mapping]

Once a domain name is properly registered, you need to request that an entry for the domain be added to your DNS record in our name servers. If you skip this step, it is impossible for anyone to locate your Web server using that domain name.

To request that the domain name be added to our name servers, contact support via Atlas, and include the domain name that you want added, as well as the main domain name for your Web server.

Currently, the fee for adding a virtual host is $35.00, and the fee for adding a canonical domain is $25.00. There is also a $7 monthly fee for each virtual host on your NT server.

Once our staff adds your DNS record to our name servers, they will send you a confirmation email.


18.4 Virtual Hosting Hints

This section contains some important tips for having success in providing Virtual Hosting to other people. Some of these features require an additional cost to set up.
18.4.2 Canonical Domain Names as Virtual Hosts

If you have a customer who wants a virtual host but doesn’t want his own domain name, you can still provide Virtual Hosting services for them by using a canonical domain name. A canonical domain, often referred to as a cname, takes the fo rm “somename.yourdomain.com” and can be used as a virtual host just as if it were an actual domain name.

You can also use cnames and Virtual Hosting to present a larger, corporate image by appearing to have several different Internet servers. For example, your company could use “www.yourdomain.com” for the main Web site, “support.yourdomain.com” for a technical support site, and “search.yourdomain.com” as a search utility. All of these separate, distinct Web sites could be housed on the same Web server for a relatively low cost.

You can add canonical domains by sending email to support@BLUEHILL.com. For each canonical domain name that you add (such as “support” or “search”), there is a $25 setup fee.


18.4.3 Virtual Hosting and Email Accounts

Virtual hosting allows you to provide an inexpensive, professional Web service to your clients. Each of your virtual hosts will be alloted their own email account making this the perfect reseller option.