multiple roots with web server

[aartjan]

Is it possible in any way to create multiple roots in the internet toolkit web server? I mean to split up a website into several sites. Like NI has: there is http://ni.com and this page has another root: http://forums.ni.com. I would like to know how to accomplish that.

[Conseils]

Taking the example that you have given: -

  The '.com' refers to the top level domain (TLD)
  The 'ni' refers to the second level domain (SLD)
  The 'forums' refers to the third level domain

  If you have www or ftp or similar this is considerd the third level domain.
  It is also possible to create fourth level domains.

Anyway for all this clever stuff a DNS or Domain Naming Service is required and if you want this globally visible on the internet it will need setting up with an ISP to point to some box somewhere on the internet.

Internally on an intranet the structure is similar and the management is the same requiring a DNS server to point the domains to the correct ip address this can all be performed on one box unix, windows server etc.

In both cases a box with one network card may host more than one ip address and its possible with the right software to point each ip address to a seperate or the same virtual web server site (webroot folder)

The above are not straight forward to maintain and can be interesting to debunk if you get it wrong, its a lot of technology for a small site of less than say 100 users.

For the typical local webserver such as on Windows 2K and XP and similar, you usualy use the structure below the main domain e.g.
http://hostname/folder
There are often options to alias folder names to friendly names.
e.g http://www.hostname/mystuff
The folder 'mystuff' could be a folder below the 'webroot' called 'my impossibly long folder naming scheme of no interest to any one but me'

Simplyfying a lot, the stuff on the left is high level routing to a server of some sort and the suff on the right is usually a folder local on the machine of interest.

The later system being straight forward to handle and manage on an intranet type application where some IT administrator does not want you mucking about with routing, name serving and such like.

[aartjan]

Thank you for an interesting explanation, but my question is more specific: is it possible to create multiple roots using the G web server? (not the built-in one, but the one provided with the internet toolkit.) I read the manual and for what I understand of it, it is no. I would like to point and host 2 different URL's to one webserver and I know it can be done with apache.

[Conseils]

As far as I am aware the Internet toolkit (Windows Version) does not support multiple root instances on the same machine in the same way that can be done on apache or Windows 2000+ server.

The configuration dialog does allow selection of one directory and one port redirection, in the event that another web service is running on the machine already.