Search Again: Re: basic setup questions From: Global Homes Webmaster Date: Wednesday, July 12, 2000 Time: 12:25:21 pm On 07/12/00 at 13:38, Rick Osgood wrote: >I've been using this for awhile, but am pretty sure that my setups >are at least partly wrong. > >Question 1.. When using the "assistant" to setup new virtual >domains, it asks if I want to setup an "A" record or not. It >mentions the choice is based on the virtual domain software that is >used. Well, I use the built in Mac - WebSTAR 4 software to serve virtual >domains. Should I have an "A" record for virtual domains, or not? In general, you can use either As or CNAMEs (an exception is any name that's the same as its zone, see below). Browsers will look up the virtual domain and get back an IP address either way. They'll then make a connection to that IP and (if it's a modern enough browser -- most of 'em these days) send the virtual domain name in the host field of the HTTP header for the request, which WebSTAR then uses to do it's 'host field mapping' virtual domain magic. What I typically do is to have an A record for the main virtual domain name and a CNAME for 'www': virtualdomain.com. NS ns1.mydomain.com. virtualdomain.com. NS ns2.mydomain.com. virtualdomain.com. MX 10 mail.mydomain.com. virtualdomain.com. MX 20 backup.mailserver.com. virtualdomain.com. A www.xxx.yyy.zzz ; the W* server's IP www.virtualdomain.com. CNAME virtualdomain.com. You need to use an A record rather than a CNAME for virtualdomain.com. because there are other records with that name (the NS and MX records). With this example, both <http://virtualdomain.com/> and <http://www.virtualdomain.com/> will work as URLs (assuming they're also set up properly in W* Virtual Hosts). You might use a wildcard (*) instead of 'www' in the CNAME if you want to alias more than one subdomain to your web server (keeping in mind the limitations of wildcard records, of course). Christopher Bort

Messages In This Thread: basic setup questions by Rick Osgood on Jul 12, 2000 at 11:40:13 am Re: basic setup questions by Global Homes Webmaster on Jul 12, 2000 at 12:25:21 pm Re: basic setup questions by Men & Mice Support on Jul 12, 2000 at 6:28:54 pm Re: basic setup questions by Rick Osgood on Jul 13, 2000 at 9:59:43 am Re: basic setup questions by Rick Osgood on Jul 13, 2000 at 10:51:37 am Re: basic setup questions by Men & Mice Support on Jul 13, 2000 at 4:31:05 pm