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HomeHomeUsing DNN Platf...Using DNN Platf...Administration ...Administration ...DNS for multiple domains, multiple portals, on one DNNDNS for multiple domains, multiple portals, on one DNN
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9/24/2006 11:32 PM
 
John Mitchell wrote

To assign multiple IP addresses to one DNN instance you can configure your IIS website to listen on more than one IP address.

Good point.

To isolate them even further, you can also create more than one IIS website and have them both point to the same home directory of your DNN install.

However, if you are using multiple IIS websites then you probably would also want multiple DNN instances, because all your data for each portal will be lumped together into the same DB tables if you run off of one DNN instance.  But it can be configured either way.

Between what you and MrSwoop said (in the next post), that got me to wondering about the conflict issues you mentioned here. If a single website is listening on multiple IP's, I'd think any processes (updates, requests, etc.) would be originating from a single site instance, whereas if we have multiple IIS websites pointing the the same home directory (and DNN instance), then I'd think we could definitely have some concurrency issues of there is enough activity. It depends on exactly how DNN handles that kind of concurrency (and I don't know that answer just yet).

Thanks for the suggestions.

 
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9/24/2006 11:56 PM
 
swillhite (mrswoop) wrote

If you want multiple domain names to resolve to the same portal, then yes... this is how you do it.  You just add the names to the list of Portal Aliases.  If you want multiple websites, you simply add those names to the list of Portal Aliases for the portal you want to answer to that name.

This can be configured in myriad different ways.  It's not really possible to state the best way to set it up in "all circumstances", because everyones needs and uses are somewhat different.  Personally, I would not recommend placing a website and an SMTP (or POP ) server on the same IP address.  Actually, I would not recommend them on the same box... but I understand working within constraints.  The point I was trying to make here is simply that as long as IIS knows how to route an HTTP request to the site... DNN can take care of the rest according to the PortalAliases associated with the individual portals, thats all.  So you can associate as many IP addresses to a site as you wish, DNN won't care how they got there, and it will divert them to the correct portal.  They do not need to have the SAME IP number, they just need to reach the IIS site that is supposed to serve the domain.

Got it; that's certainly the easiest way - just point the domains to the IP of the DNN installation and make sure there are DNN portal aliases for each domain being pointed. Works great.

Again, you can make this as hard or easy as you wish ( not knowing all your constraints ) simply assign another IP to the site which houses the DNN instance.  To carry on our example, create DNS entries for domain2.com pointing to 123.45.678.91 and also add 123.45.678.91 to the list of IP's for the same site in IIS ( so you now have one site answering on 2 ip addresses ).  The same DNN instance is receiving the request for domain2.com ( and domain1.com ) and answering with the portal which contains domain2.com in its PortalAlias list.

Not sure at this point when this would be really necessary, but we'd still have a single site interacting with the DNN installation, so that should be fine in theory.

As far as using separate IIS sites to do this ( sharing a DNN instance in the file system ), I am aware of some folks doing this... but it is not fully supported as there are a number of potential complications with process collisions.  This is not to say that the way that some folks are using DNN does not allow this, some folks will (rightly) say they do this without incident.  However... it again gets back to understanding your constraints & requirements and determining an appropriate configuration strategy.

DNN is very flexible.

Now this is getting interesting in the realm of ASP.Net and DNN theory - how exactly DNN interacts with multiple IIS sites sharing a single DNN install, and what might go wrong. It seems like the potential for conflict is certainly there, and it probably depends on a number of server and software variables unless everything is already sewed up tight in transactions and rollbacks.  Somehow I suspect this might be pushing the limits of the DNN code design if there is significant traffic, but I'm not familiar enough with the core code to know for sure. Agreed, DNN certainly is flexible. In the meantime, thanks for everyone's help - I have my earlier questions answered and have the sites up and running.

 
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9/25/2006 7:07 AM
 
swillhite (mrswoop) wrote

This is actually WAY simpler than most folks want to try and make it.  I'll try to stick with your example, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how easy this is.

Setting the stage:

You have a machine which houses IIS.  That machine recieves HTTP requests from some list of IP addresses ( which includes 123.45.678.90, 123.45.678.91 ) through the network.  So far, so good.

You have a website set up in IIS which has an association with a set of IP addresses.  For the purposes of this example, lets say that the site is only associated with 123.45.678.90.  You have DNN installed in that website.  We will assume that the IP association is a wildcard, that is that in the configuration... the site is set to answer all requests to the IP address 123.45.678.90.  I point that out because some hosts actually include your url in the association which would prohibit it from answering other url's without another entry specific for it.

Hello

Sorry to jump in on this post but I just wish to clarify some things, is it really this simple?

To create a parent portal or child portal which will use the same database as the main host all I need to do is this:

  • Assuming that I already have my DNN site already set up under: mysite.com
  • Go into my IIS and create *.mysite.com
  • this will consequently create a * within my DNN root file system.
  • under my Super User account go into  >> host >> portals >> create child portal
  • mysite.com/mychild if I have not yet registered mychild domain name
  • Or into  >> host >> portals >> create parent portal
  • parent1.mysite.com if I have not yet registered parent1 domain name
  • parent2.com.mysite.com  if I have registered parent2.com domain name and the DNS is pointing to my server

 

Assuming I have set up the * which is now located in my DNN folder and I have created parents or child portals.

My next step is to create an alias in ths site settings.

swillhite (mrswoop) wrote

Getting URL's to the DNN site:

Simply set the DNS associated with the URL to point to 123.45.678.90.  This can be done for any number of sites.  In practice, I usually set three A records ( www.domain1.com, domain1.com and *.domain1.com ).  This provides for the ability to add cname sites ( instead of child sites ) using the format "cname.domain1.com".

Getting the URL's to a specific portal is simply a matter of setting the appropriate Portal Alias's in the Site Settings ( under a Super User account ).

That is all there is to it.  You can associate multiple IP addresses if you wish, but there is no requirment to do so.  Once you understand these basic mechanics, you can figure out how to tweak your environment the way you want it, everyone does something a little different.

To add an alias with an extension can this only be done if the parent is a registered domain name which is pointing to my server?

  • parent2.com (a registered domain name) to do this I need to create a link
  •  <a href="http//www.parent2.com">parent2.com</a> point this to my server.  Then when www.parent2.com is typed into the address bar.
  • Parent2.com will display?

But if the parent is not a registered domain name, what is the format to create this alias?

  • parent1 (a non registered domain name)
  • <a href ="http//www.parent1.mysite.com>parent1.com</a>
  • If somebody typed www.parent1.com into the address bar will it go to parent1 web site?
  • But if somebody else has registered that domain name what then?

To assign a child alias:

  • mychild (a non registered domain name)
  • <a href ="http//www.mysite.com.mychild>mychild.com</a>
  • or should it be like this:
  • <a href ="http//www.mysite.com.mychild>mychild</a>
  • Or to register several child sites I would do this: Create a wildcard
  • <a href ="http//www.mysite.com.*>mychild1</a>
  • So can then have:
  • mychild, mychild1, mychild2
  • Or do I need to set up an alias for each child?
  • Can I include extensions on the child sites?
  •  <a href ....>whatever is HERE </a> is the assigned URL for the name

Or to reach a child site the URL is:

To reach a parent site the URL is:

 

What part of the above is not correct.Or is the above way off?

 

Thanks

Lynn


www.seemalta.net
 
New Post
10/6/2006 1:07 PM
 
"Not sure at this point when this would be really necessary, but we'd still have a single site interacting with the DNN installation, so that should be fine in theory."

One factor is that use the same IIS site for all DNN portals is all their webstats are in the same log.  This presents a security issue if one of them wishes to conduct a log review.  I have tried using ISS site pointing to the same root folder but never worked.  As these tests were on live sites I didn't spend a lot of time tring to get them to work.  It is important I get seperate log files so could someone point to information on how to set this up properly.  Perhaps one of the people you allude to in earlier post could share their experience?
 
New Post
10/7/2006 1:54 PM
 

SmarterTools SmarterStats works great with multiple DNN portals.
http://www.smartertools.com/Products/SmarterStats/Overview.aspx

If you need access to raw logs you will have come up with a different (perhaps custom) solution.


Dwayne J. Baldwin
 
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