[BlueOnyx:24224] Re: Personal web pages in 5210R

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Ernie,

> How does one go about adding personal web pages in 5210R like you can do
> in 5209R and prior versions.
> 
> There use to be a web directory in each users home they could put pages
> into, that seems to be missing in 5210R and access via a url like"
> http://example.com/~bob or https://www.example.com/~ernie

Sorry, but that feature is not implemented in 5210R and it won't be
coming back.

In order to work, "User Owned Webs" required relaxed permissions on
directories all the way down to the ~username/web directories in order
for Apache to be able to access the webpages there. Which - from a
security point of view - has always been rather uncool.

When I introduced Chrooted Jails to 5210R I had to enforce very strict
permissions and ownerships on all User and Vsite directories. So it was
clear that this was in no shape or form compatible with "User Owned Webs".

Weighting the benefits of both I had to make a choice:

- No Jails, but continue with "User Owned Webs"
- Jails, but no "User Owned Webs"

That choice then was rather easy, as Chrooted Jails benefit everyone and
"User Owned Webs" were something that was already on it's way out more
than a decade ago. Additionally: "User Owned Webs" had already stopped
working for Vsites that had PHP-FPM enabled, because we couldn't provide
PHP-parsing for them. Meaning: If a Vsite had PHP-FPM enabled, then
"User Owned Webs" automatically got turned off on 5209R.

The alternative to this is to create a "User Sub Domain" for each user.
This functionality has been retained for 5210R and can be activated with
one click. The obvious downside being that you'd need to have DNS A
records for that, which the GUI can handle automatically. But which is
naturally more complicated if your DNS is external.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber