Hosting multiple sites on IIS 6 for an intrant

[SerGreene]

Good Day All

I have a web company with 2 employees and my self. I am trying to create a intranet where we can have our clients web pages run off the server for testing and collaboration purposes. Right now we do it using virtual directories on the server but I have a need to do it using mutiple websites. Why: because a few of my sites need to be set as root.

I would like to have it where we can just type in
http://cutomer1
http://cutomer2
http://cutomer3
and so on.

Right now we do it as http://servername/customer1

In addition, from time to time I have clients hit my server from outside our office to see their work in progress. If they are one of the sites that needs root access then I have to shift the default website to that folder. The only problem is, then I can only really have one site that can be previewed from outside at a time.

What I would like to do is to have them log in with a username and password and then I route them to the correct site. I have seen this done before but I never knew how to pull it off. The username and password routing thing is no problem. I am just not sure where to route them to. If I could even set it up as
http://customer1.serve rname
http://customer2.serve rname
That would even work out well

Let me give you the basics of what I am working with
Windows 2003 Server running IIS
5 computers in the office getting their IPs from the Comcast router/firewall.
(I don’t know if assigning the ips from the server is going to help, never done that before but if I need to I will.)
Computers are not part of a particular domain. All we use the server for is to hold files, host our web sites for testing/preview and share an office printer
1 machine is a mac and it never resolves the name but from that one I just user the ip address of the server.

Ohhh, I have tried the ip address thing where I use the server Ip address with the port number behind it but that will get to be a bare when we get to a lot of sites. In addition I only have port 80 opened from the outside. So if I have a site on prot 83, I don’t think It can be accessed.

Sorry about the long email. I just read the posting guidelines and I am tyring to be as clear and concise as possible. I hope what I am trying to do is understandable

Thanks in advance for your help
Ser Greene

[kenobewan]

You are a nominee for my first poster of the year, more info makes everyone's job easier :o) Welcome aboard!

There are few options open to you. You should find an answer to this question and more:
Frequently Asked Questions About IIS 6.0

[SerGreene]

Thanks for the Kudos on the Post :) :)

I went to the Microsoft IIS6 faq site but I didn't see any thing there that addressed my issue. is there any other direct help you can provide.

[kenobewan]

I assumed that there would be information on host headers, but should have checked :). That is my suggestion, here is a W2K article that should give you an idea on how to set things up:
Host Headers: Running Multiple Websites on 1 IP Address

[SerGreene]

I read that one too and while it does talk about host headers, it doesn't address my problem of needing to have these different site on the intranet and controlling what request goes where.

In other words if I type in sergreene.com on my web browser. It goes out to the web to find sergreene.com. How then would I type in sergreene.com on my computer an go to the development area instead of out to the web.

I guess I would need to know how to modify what gets sent as a part of the host header. if I could do that, then I could send my server IP address what ever I wanted and then control what development website is displayed.

Like wise: Clients coming in through my dedicated IP Address currently come to a menu of sites. How then would I point them to a particular development site on my server.

[SerGreene]

Any more suggestions?

[kenobewan]

Only other ones that comes to mind is redirecting your IP address in the page load event. Better way is to use the server name as an alternate or just what most other developers do use three addresses - development (localhost), test (server name), live (url). Your idea seems good initially, but not one I would adopt. That is of course your choice.

[SerGreene]

Thanks for all of your help

I don't have a solution yet but I am going to figure something out over the holiday weekend and let you know. Talk to you soon