"!Dr. Joe Baptista" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> > I'm curious Joe - are you using mod_vhost_alias?
>
> I just checked my apache config files and no - it does not look like we
> have that module installed. Do you recommend I look into it?
>
Well, yes. That or mod_rewrite, of which mod_vhost_alias is pretty much an
extension. With either, you can dynamically generate VirtualHost's, which
saves a fair bit on administation, particularly with the amount of vhosts
you're talking about. In essence, the server uses a kind of regular
expression format to read the requested URL and serves content from an
appropriate directory on the server based on that.
So if the requested URL was: http://host.sld.tld/dir, the server might serve
data from: /www/vhosts/tld/sld/host/dir. Which means that you don't have to
edit your httpd.conf at all - you just need to create the directory on the
server. You don't even need to restart Apache...
I think it was originally created by Demon Internet in the UK, who were one
of the first to offer their dialup customers subdomain webspace (as against
UserDir webspace - /~user), which of course meant thousands (if not hundreds
of thousands) of Virtual Hosts. But then again it might have been Ralf
Engelchall, who wrote mod_rewrite (and mod_ssl, and, and... :)
Alternatively, look into using mod_perl. With this, you can add a <Perl>
block of code to your httpd.conf, and interface directly with a database to
read information for domains. This would be more suited to a situation where
you needed custom vhost blocks though. If you can structure the vhosts -
which obviously would be preferred - mod_vhost_alias or mod_rewrite is the
kiddy.
Just thought it might cut down your workload a little...
adam
