retard webmaster's virtual hosting on apache - three weeks later still not working
OK, onward...
TODAY, I went to all 20 domains at various registries and disabled all forwarding, disabled all email forwarding, disabled and wiped out everything (one hour). Which also wiped out a weeks worth of url flipping in the htmls (and wiped out my source files for a domain...but a friend MIGHT have those cached...fun stuff).
This particular setup is a bit complicated by the fact that the domains are spread on multiple registrars (five) and were/are all pointing to either godaddy or mydomain.com where forwarding WAS taking place. That was so we could use a hosting service we HAD and a single domain we HAD to host multiple domain names in subdirectories... like http://www.mymainsite.com/cs/index.html for the repository of all files for cutesurfers.com (a g-rated family site by the way)... all sites had a special folder for their html, javascript etc. and shared photos in a common area called http://www.mymainsite.com/pics/somephoto.gif
ALL THAT HAS BEEN WIPED OUT as of today so all sites are down (as of several weeks ago)...
I left pointers to godaddy.com and mydomain.com intact to make use of their DNS and went through each DNS record and set them up as follows.
A record is now the IP address where we are trying to host our own stuff. 123.12.123.12 with the @ sign.
CNAME records are (I dunno what I was supposed to put here) www.thisspecificdomain.com, i.e. www.cutesurfers.com
MX records were all set to mail.bigdrivehosting.com, not that I have a mail server, but hopefully I will before the end of the year or the domains all expire, whichever comes first :-( I did find a freebie mail server called mailenable and am going to try that out since, while I would love to use the Apache James I couldn't figure out how to get it to run and have enough on my plate to fix and repair...
IT IS NOW SAT so I get to wait a day or two for these new changes to propogate. Somebody suggested I use everydns.net so I could do a somesite.mainsite.com thingy but I am scrapping that since for some reason I can't login although they did seem like really nice folks.
Meanwhile I am going into Apache's httpd.conf file and trying to follow suggestions from Choon, stdunbar and eBoundary and set up the virtual hosting blocks, listen to this and that, namevirtualhost etc.
I am also scanning the net for tutorials on this stuff so I can find something about each section. While I appreciate what apache docs describe, having written a few hundred manuals and while I appreciate the BREADTH of the apache docs the DEPTH and DETAIL and examples given are, uh, weak by my standards or I would have been done by now. I realize I sound like a whining retard - total retard - being down for three weeks and counting but a manual detailing each step would be nice. When I am done I will write it so nobody has to go through this nightmare... I had to post a client (one of the 20+ sites) at geocities and he is a sweetheart so I am ok there but jeeeezzzz...
Anyway, if one of you nice folks wants a copy of the current (and changing) .conf file let me know... any further helping hands are appreciated...
THE CURRENT NT/2000 drive configuration is...
\hosting\adomain.com/web/index.html, other.html, scripts.js etc.
and
\hosting\adomain.com/web/pics/imagea.jpg, imageb.gif etc.
and
\hosting\adomain.com/web/userscripts/someperl.pl etc. for perl.pl files
and
\hosting\adomain.com\web\mods\somemod.pm for perl pm files
and
\hosting\adomain.com/web/data/userdata.dat (i.e. csreg.dat for a cutesurfers guestbook)
and
\hosting\adomain.com\web\data\subfoldera, subfolderb, subfolderc for complex structures of data that are stored one level down in various folders
and
\hosting\adomain.com/web/upics/userphoto.jpg for uploaded photos from users
and
\hosting\adomain.com/web/newpics/newupload.jpg for uploaded photos from users that need to be checked to make sure they are 'clean' enough for family time...
and then repeat that structure above for bdomain.com and cdomain.org and ddomain.net etc.
So, I was going to try dynamic aliasing but that bombed face down and now am going to hand code each virtual block structure even though they are the same structure.
Also, I want all folders READ ONLY except for DATA where users can add (via my perl scripts) to things like guest book files and UPICS where users can add (via perl scripts) to their smiling faces and NEWPICS where users can add (via perl scripts) recent pics to be reviewed...which are automatically dumped to UPICS if the byte counts are good and they pass the 'clean' review.
So, I swear I am not a total retard...it is a semi-complex structure I was running and getting apache to digest all this (and getting me to digest apache) has been, uh, interesting to say the least.
I have to bail for a few hours today (to go to my buddies and rifle through his cache for the lost domain) and will be back tonight to start the head banging process over again...
thanks for all your help and suggestions and fingers are still crossed over here that hopefully I won't end up in a mental ward before this thing works...
