I'm looking for some advice regarding a webservice.
I currently have 3 websites that do the same thing, just with a different branding. Each of the website integrates with a third party site via a webservice and there's quite a lot of config goes into each site.
All 3 sites are on the same server, each has it's own IP and runs under HTTPS.
I would like to move functionality to a central website and access it from my other websites via my own webservice. My initial thoughts are to create a new website using the default webserver as it's only internal to the sites, but it's the first time I've done something like this so I'm not entirely clear.
I've a few questions that I still haven't found the answer to, so would appreciate a nudge in the right direction.
Can this be done via the default website?
Do I need a separate IP from the ones currently allocated to my 3 sites?
Do I need another domain name or will localhost suffice?
Is there a better way?
Thanks in advance.
Your question gives a lot to think about. However, the quick answer is "yes". If you make a web service for yourself, you can host it on localhost, on the same server as your three web sites. You don't need any web address or IP address. Hard to believe that it is actually that simple, but for a locally hosted web service, it is.
After reading your entire question, it seems like your challenges will eventually be logical ones (once you run the traffic of three sites, into one WS). I'm sure you already know that.
Related
I am going to need to host multiple websites in IIS, but will not have separate URLs setup in DNS for each one. Because of this, I will not be able to use the Aias/CNAME functionality in IIS to redirect traffic to individual Websites in IIS.
Would it be secure enough to publish all of my web apps to the same Website in IIS?
Example: under Default Website, there is a folder for each individual web app:
-Default Website
--[folder for webapp1]
--[folder for webapp2]
--[folder for webapp3]
URLs used to access each web app:
www.mydomain.com/webapp1
www.mydomain.com/webapp2
www.mydomain.com/webapp3
Is this sort of setup secure or a good idea (best practices)? It seems like a simple solution to the problem of not having a separate domain name in DNS for every web app (website).
What do you think?
I don't see any issue with that approach, in a way it does simplify things quite a bit actually.
Sites being secure is not going to be affected by this. Of course each application would be under it's own pool, it's always a great idea to run like this.
This being said, your main website is going to run under it's own application pool and if there is a problem with it all your applications will be affected. That's the one thing I would pay extra attention to so you might want to not actually use that top level app pool for anything.
I made a simple .html file with a .css and I want to share it with some people without having to send the files and explaining how to open them etc. so I was wondering: Is it possible to use my IP and a port so that when they put it in their browser, they get the webpage as if they normally loaded a website? Like this:
xx.xxx.xxx.xxx:9000 in their url bar and it would be like they opened my .html file with their browser normally.
Is that possible? If yes: can someone explain how?
For a permanent solution I would look into a hosting provider instead of setting up self hosting. It will enable you to easily deploy out new versions hassle free.
If you decide to go with your own hosting you have to manage firewall and network configurations on your own which is too involved to explain in this answer.
I don't believe this is possible, unless you set your pc to act as a server, but that's way more work than sending the files around and explaining how to open them unfortunately.
Check around for some cheap web hosting as a long-term solution, i pay 40 a year for hosting and for how many sites and projects I have on it, it's worth it :)
You should install a web server, configure it and your proxy. Then give them your IP adress.
They will be able to access it via their browser.
Easier to give them a zipped folder by mail.
I found this recently and has been a good tool for collaborating with team members, http://fenixwebserver.com/. They also do the proxy stuff allowing developers to share the webpages easily.
In an upcoming version of a currently-in-development webapp, I need to serve multiple domains from a single site. The code on the site will recognize the individual domains and vary the content accordingly. I do not know all of the domains that we will be serving, as clients can add new domains to their site. The coding parts, I know how to do - when clients add a domain, there will be a corresponding entry into our database and that will act as a key to control which set of content is shown.
The thing is, I suck at system administration. The server already hosts a dozen different sites unrelated to this webapp, so it's not a situation where every domain that hits our server's IP can go through the code I describe above. If I knew the domains ahead of time, I could simply point them to our server's IP and then create bindings in IIS to handle each. But since I do not know the domains ahead of time, I'm rather at a loss. What can I do to enable my IIS7 server to support this situation?
After looking around a bit, I have found a few options for this.
1) Building It Into The Code
Probably the best option is to programmatically create bindings in IIS6 and in IIS7. This way everything is integrated into the webapp, meaning there's no muss or fuss outside of the app. It requires a bit more work in the app itself, but the benefits of keeping things clean and keeping all the functionality around this action inside the single codebase are almost definitely worth it.
2) PowerShell
Another option is to set up a script for powershell to have it handle this stuff based on the script detecting changes to the database. This would work well also, but has the drawback of creating two codebases to maintain.
3) Remove Domain Bindings
This answer led me to try removing the existing domain from the webapp's bindings in IIS. Making this change resulted in being able to reach my webapp by just visiting the IP address (so the binding was no longer an issue). And the one domain we have set for this webapp so far still reached the desired site as well. So it seems that the solution could be as simple as to have no host/domain listed in the bindings on IIS. As long as only one site does this, all traffic that does not match another binding loads that site. A big upside here is that it takes less time/effort than any of the coding solutions mentioned above. The downside is that you can only have one site on the server perform this way, and you can no longer have the server locked to only serving content with recognized domains.
Is it possible to add a extra ip address to the server?
This way you could let the IIS process all request on this IP address and run your logic for these request only. leaving the existing websites untouched.
I’ve scoured the Internet via Google and could not find if it is possible to host ASP .Net and Ruby on Rails on the same server!
Do you know if it is possible?
If not, would I be able to do this?
– www.abc.com – redirects to Page A (hosted on Ruby on Rails server)
– jobs.abc.com OR www.abc.com/jobs - redirects user to Page B (hosted on ASP .Net server)
So from the user point of view, they’re both under the same domain name and appear seamless? So perhaps jobs.abc.com points to a different IP address.
Has anyone done this before?
Thank you all.
Yes, the same physical computer can host RoR and ASP.NET at the same time.
To merge two apps on separate platforms and make them appear as one seamless site is a little more challenging. One not very nice option is to use IFRAMEs to render one site (B) inside another's (A) pages, allowing the top-level URL to still show A's domain, etc.
It sounds like finding out more about the issue you are trying to solve would be a good idea, as going down this road is likely to create a mess in the future, and should be avoided if at all possible.
You can also use sub-domains like you suggested, so that the domain names are similar but not exactly the same.
You will also need to consider how to share authentication, etc., across sites.
You'll not find a host that supports both I guess.
I'm thinking of something similar. Seems a Windows VPS hosting is the way to go, and then I can install Ruby to IIS as FastCGI filter, or even have another server side by side but I don't expect this to work flawlessly when both servers will need to listen to port 80 (doable I guess, but probably troubling).
BTW, for the jobs.abc.com scenario you don't need the two apps on the same server. You can have them on two servers and manage the difference via DNS.
I have a flex app that is hosted on my server. It runs off an amfphp + mysql stack.
I have had inquiries from potential clients who want to "white label" the product. Part of this means that they would want it to appear that the app is running off their server. So their clients would login at www.theirsite.com instead of www.mysite.com.
I obviously dont want to give them the actual app...but are there ways of letting their server redirect to mine without the user actually knowing?
I don't have extensive experience with Flex, but I've worked a lot with Flash. Several ideas come to mind:
Create a wrapper: a SWF that loads your app. With the proper security settings, it should work. Check out this article on crossdomain.xml and the specs for Security.allowDomain()
You could simply embed the SWF from your site, similar to a YouTube video
If that is not satisfactory and your hosting services allow it, you can create a DNS A record or a DNS C record for a subdomain in there site, but you would support all the traffic that page has.
Probably the easiest way would be for them to alter their DNS record to make a CNAME entry (alias) that is a subdomain of theirsite.com:
yourapp.theirsite.com => www.mysite.com