IIS 5 with more than one website?

Need help setting up two domains to run on port 80 using IIS 5.0 I can't seem to figure it out.

Use host headers, and just have [url=www.domain1.com]www.domain1.com[/url] setup for site1, and [url=www.domain2.com]www.domain2.com[/url] setup for site2. You check out the help file for more info, and [url=www.iisanswers.com]www.iisanswers.com[/url] for other info on IIS.

Ok i am still confused? Where do I set this Site1 and Site2? Under the host headers for one website, I can have it setup for test.domain1.com or notest.domain1.com.... If I try to do two different domains, it doesn't work. I am behind a Linksys router with port 80 forwarded to my server that has two local ip addresses binded. That isn't working either...

Dredd, Clutch helped me a few weeks back....and now my IIS, DNS, WINS, and DHCP are all working perfectly....I couldn't ask for more.

The answers he gave you are correct...but they're kinda vague....sorry Clutch ...You'll need to do some other things with DNS, and WINS if you want it to work perfectly.

Clutch is an extremely busy guy....When you're as talented as he is, everybody expects the world from you. But that's why I am offering my assistance....Besides, he taught me how to do it !! So if you need any in depth assistance, don't be afraid to email me.

Clutch, I hope you don't feel that I'm stepping on your toes....I was just trying to help with the massive load that sits on your shoulders. Besides, I could use the refresher course of running thru it again with someone

Klark

Nope, that's fine. Give it a shot with Klark and see how it goes, as I am sure he can get you through it (we went over this many times, didn't we klark? ;)). The answers were short as I was under the impression that you were more familiar with IIS than you seem to be. But fear not, if Klark can't get you through this, I can.



Also, Klark, since he is more concerned about outside people coming in, all he needs is to have port 80 going to the one server, unbind the multiple IPs (as they aren't needed since he's going to use host headers), and apply the desired host header to each site in the IIS console. The DNS/WINS stuff will be of more use for internal network usage, and not much if he is just using simple NAT.

I got it to work but not using host headers as I thought I could. Instead, I went to Zoneedit and edited my nameserver to do a webforward to another name then on my end of the server, I setup the host headers with that false name that was on port 8080. So now when they type my domain they are actually going to port 8080 and don't know it because of the web forward. It works, but I am still wondering why if I have only one WAN IP, why can't I host multiple sites on port 80. Thanks for the help!

Well, I can't quite follow everything you have written, but you should be able to host multiple sites on the same IP and port using host headers just fine. It sounds like you aren't getting the subdomain names forwarded to you properly. Can you tell me what the domains are so can I check them out? I have setup my webserver at home to show what host headers can do:

http://www.driventechnologies.com

is my normal site, and my "test" subdomain was just added (thanks to Terminal Services):

http://test.driventechnologies.com

I am using a single Linksys BEFSR41 router with just port 80 forwarded, and I am using TZO's dynamic DNS service to point driventechnologies.com to my cable IP.

I had two domains, dreddnet.com and damonandamber.com
I just couldn't figure out the subdomain structure. I am on Time Warner RR connection if that's important too.
Thanks,

OK, and you own both of those domain names, correct? You also have a DNS service of some sort pointing both to your external IP, right?

Well, right now if I ping both of those names, only damonandamber.com properly returns an IP and can ping it, while dreddnet.com returns a *different* IP and is not replying to a ping request (possible old IP). I would first make sure that they always point to your external IP, and then worry about host headers. When you can get the IP issue fixed, let us know so we can move on to host headers.

BTW, the same way I setup subdomains will work with TLDs (Top Level Domains) too.

I am stuck on a DHCP so I use dynamic dns to update my ip address for my domains to zoneedit.com which is my nameserver for the domains. I also ran a ping on the two domains, and have no clue what the ip address is for the damonandamber.com domain. Must have something to do with the webforward. But both sites come up in IE.

Here's an article on using DNS for IIS admins, and at the bottom is illustrates the usage of host headers that are mapped to a particular domain name (it was at the link I listed earlier).

http://www.iisanswers.com/articles/dns_for_iis.htm

Also, is this server fully secured (patched up at *least*)? You seem pretty new at this, and I would like to make sure your server is up to date on the patches at a minimum, and (hopefully) locked down with the IIS Lockdown Utility from Microsoft.

Clutch said everything that you need to do. But I'll dive into the details....for you, and for the sake of remembering it myself !!

You CAN host more than one site with just one IP...using the host headers as Clutch described. This would have been alot easier than doing all that Zonedit/nameserver wizardary that you did.

First, remove the multiple IP's from the box...you'll only need one. In your IIS console, right click the FIRST site, go to 'Propeties', then you'll see IP address. Change the IP back to 'All Unassigned'. Then click the 'Advanced' button. Inside there is where you'll assign [url=www.domain1.com ...or]www.domain1.com ...or[/url] whatever the name is.

Then, do the exact same for the second site...but use the other name. Both sites should be 'All Unassigned', and port 80.

I'm going to speculate how this actually works: When someone requests [url=www.domain1.com,]www.domain1.com,[/url] that info is placed in the 'header' of the packet that they request from/to? the server. IIS then reads the 'header' and then routes that person to the correct site. Im sure Clutch will probably school me on this, but thats why I come here....lol

Though after reading everything else you posted, I'm probably just getting in the way of Clutch helping you....so I'll just shutup and sit back and read what happens...lol

Good luck...

Klark

Are you pinging from outside the network that the servers are hosted on? Also, are you trying to bring up the pages from outside of your local network (I am assuming the station you are on now and the hosting server are on the same LAN)? Right now, dreddnet is coming with a "Testing..." page, and damonandamber has nothing but a 404. Not to mention that both domains are pointing to different IPs, I would imagine that you have WAN broadcast turned off on the router (hence no PING replies to me), and damonandamber.com's current IP is an older one of yours. I am using RR myself, but I am only hosting one domain. However, the rules still apply; just follow the setup as listed earlier after you can get people outside your LAN to pull up both domain names and get the same IP.

Not sure what I did different this time around, but I seemed to have it working according to your method of host headers. Both domains are coming up under my wan ip address without zoneedit's web forward. Thanks guys, you are great!

Spiffy.



I see that they both have the same IP now, so that's what did it. You probably had the host headers in there already but you just needed the name resolution bit to be ironed out.

I am running behind a linksys router with port 80 forwarded to my machine. I DO NOT have DNS or WINS installed, I was told by REGISTER.COM that I could use their DNS Servers. So all I did was point the domain names to my WAN IP address. Do I have to setup DNS? or anything else? PLEASE HELP.

Thanks in Advance,

David

He sent me a PM about this, so I will post my reply here as well for anyone else in the same situation.

Hang on there bud, there's a couple of ways to go about this. Now, what you "could" do (and this is the easiest) is simply have both sites point to the same IP and port (generally 80) and then use "host headers". What host headers do is read the incoming URL request for the desired TLD (Top Level Domain), and then brokers that traffic and sends it to the correct site. For instance, you host siteA and siteB:

www.siteA.com
www.siteB.com

On the server, you right click on each site and select properties. Then, on the Web Site tab select the advanced button. Now you will see the entries at the top that the site will respond to. You can just add each name for that particular site there, such as:

For siteA
www.sitea.com
sitea.com
sitea (if using this on a LAN and you already have sitea listed in either the WINS DB or in your LMHOSTS file to point to the IIS server IP)

For siteB
www.siteb.com
siteb.com
siteb (same rules as above)

Make sure to specify the IP (it can be "all unassigned" if you want it to monitor all addresses for these requests) and port that you want to use.

Now, if you want to use IIS FTP, you will not have the luxury of host headers, so if you want to maintain these sites via IIS FTP you will need to create separate directories. You can even configure IIS to dump certain NT logons directly into their own directories on the server or on the network (like assigning home dirs in a normal FTP server). If this is needed, ask.

Another option is to setup your own DNS box to answer name server requests. If, for some reason, you *need* to host your own DNS system, then this can be done in Windows 2000 (I wouldn't recommend it, as from what I have see it can get easily saturated with replication traffic if not setup properly and/or not on a fairly strong box). You would know if you need to do this if you asked the registrar to use your own server IP as the name server (normally this would be your ISPs or dynamic service like DNS2Go or TZO). Simply run through the DNS wizard and add your primary zone (and then you might want to add your reverse lookup as well), and then assign your DNS names for each box there. At that point, once each machine that needs to be listed (and has "real", static IPs to the Internet) has been entered, you can enter the respective site in there as well. You can enter "www.sitea.com", "sitea.com", and "ftp.sitea.com" if needed into the sitea.com DNS zone. You will have to do this for your other domain name as well. Remember, this is simply a gloss-over to give you an idea of what to do in this situation, but you should make sure to read over the documentation and make *ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE* that you are up to date on patches and security templates (such as using IISLockdown/URLScan on your IIS box and/or the hisec.inf template for your server). Many people choose Windows 2000 over *nix and BSD because it's easier to get started, but never take the time to actually learn what they are doing and get burned for it in the end.

Here's one site giving a fairly simple layout of DNS for the entry level IIS admin.

http://www.iisanswers.com/articles/dns_for_iis.htm

Here's another link:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q190008&

Good luck, I'll expand up this later.