[BlueOnyx:14328] Re: Feature Request - cover the call of ip address instead of domain

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Dirk,

> If a customer is using one IP address for more than one site (and
> this is standard) and somebody is calling this IP address via the
> browser the content of the site with the smallest site<number> will
> be displayed.
>
> Is there a possibility for you to add something like a site0 which
> is existing per default (and cannot be deleted only disabled)
> and which is taking all ip adresses which are in use. Then it
> would be possible to place a default site which will be displayed
> if someone is using the ip instead of the domain.If somebody is
> using one IP address for one site (or do not want to use this
> service), he can disable the default site.

Hmmm ... this requires some thinking. I'll look into it when I overhaul
the base-vsite module for the new BlueOnyx (within the next two weeks).

I'd like to avoid the "site0" stuff, though. Because if we'd do it that
way, it wouldn't be possible to CMU-migrate this without extending CMU
specifically to handle this, too. Unless "site0" shows up in the virtual
site list as well. Which would just add more confusion.

One idea might be that you can select one existing vsite on the box to
be the primary vsite. Alternatively you can fill in an URL to which you
will be redirected in case someone goes directly to the IP and that IP
has multiple vsites. I think that would cover this nicely.

That feature would go under "Network Settings" / "Apache" and might look
like this:

Enable IP access redirects:	[Checkbox]
Primary Virtual Site:		[Pulldown of Vsites]
Alternative URL (optional):	[Textbox for URL]

We could also throw in another checkbox that enables/disables redirects
for IP's that have just one Vsite. In that case this behavior will be
global and it'll affect all Vsites and all IPs in the same fashion.
Which makes enabling the feature smoother as you don't have to go
through all vsites to haggle with these settings.

On the server side it would just create a static HTML page with a header
that redirects to the desired primay vsite's URL or the alternate URL
that was specified. That avoids having to enable PHP or Perl for that
"dummy-site". And I really mean URL (and not just FQDN), so you could
specify a redirect target like this:

http://www.my-company.com/client-info.php?os=bx&server=box4711

That static HTML page will probably be located in a subdirectory of
/var/www/html/ and not be under /home/.sites/ or /home/sites/ to avoid
further confusion.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber