Can an IIS serve a webpage without a website configured? - iis

Scenario:
Currently I have an IIS Server which holds the following websites:
-test1.local - Binded to 10.0.0.10:443(https)
-test2.local - Binded to 10.0.0.11:443(https)
-test3.local - Binded to 10.0.0.12:443(https)
Recently I've created a DNS entry of "test4.local" to point at test3's IP of 10.0.0.12. The Idea is that I can use a second DNS entry to point to the same IP address that test3.local uses. I keep getting a "Connection_Reset" in my browser and not sure exactly whats going on here.
My question is - Can this configuration actually work without creating an actual site or do I need to make a website called "test4.local" in the IIS server and bind it to whatever IP to make it work?

Related

domain name does not open the website, redirects to default IP instead of opening www

I recently changed NS of one domain to another host and created a domain using Helm Control Panel.
The problem is that when I type domain name (ie. www.MyDomain.com) instead of opening the coresponding website, it opens host webmail page which is served by smarter mail.
I have cleared dns cache, rebuilt and updated it. also I removed the domain and added it again.
Pinging the domain name returns server's IP address and it's up.
The hosting OS is windows server 2003.
I appreciate any comments to solve the problem.
Edit 1:
Though this was a long last headache, I solved the problem by removing domain's DNS entry alongside with all alias domains attached to it directly in DNS Server console, restarting server and then rebuilding DNS Zone via Helm Control Panel. I'm not sure if this was the best practice but it seems there was a mix of domain's DNS, alias domains' DNS, Hosting software, Caching problems.
Edit 2:
Actually this error was not about the DNS stuff, it is a failure of Helm Control Panel adding/removing alias domains. To share the experience, I Add a answer to this question.
This was not a DNS error.
I found the answer when examining IIS where i noticed the website was stopped.
Forcing the website to start, this error message poped up:
IIS was unable to start the site, another site may already be using the port you configured for this site.
Further investigation revealed that one same domain alias has previously added to another domain/host.
Removing this alias from IIS > Website Properties > Website > Advanced > Advanced Website Identification, fixed the problem.
What led me to assume a dns problem mistakenly was that default IP of server is set to mail server by default. so, when a website is stopped the domain points to mail server.
Hope this help for future.

How to display content from another domain by editing CNAME records?

I have a site that lets people have their own e-stores, for ex- mysite.com/clientname
What I want is, if somebody opens store.clientname.com or clientname.com/store, the content is pulled from mysite.com/clientname. [ So that their users feel that they are browsing on their site ]
I know this is possible because site'e like tumblr let you do that by changing a CNAME entry for your domain to their IP address.
I do have a dedicated IP address.
Also, can this be done by editing the .htaccess file at clientname.com, and if yes, which method is better/easy?
You'll want to solve the problem in a completely different way for http://store.clientname.com/ versus http://clientname.com/store.
In the first case, you can serve the web site as a virtual host. Just set up a virtual host called store.clientname.com and set its DocumentRoot to be the existing directory that contains the files for http://mysite.com/clientname. If you have other web server configuration directives that apply to http://mysite.com/clientname then you'll also want to apply those in the virtual host. Finally, the client can set up a CNAME record in DNS for store.clientname.com pointing to your web server.
If you are using Apache, you can also use a default virtual host and mod_rewrite to dynamically translate URLs of the form http://store.{whatever}/ to http://mysite.com/{whatever}/. However, this won't work if you are using HTTPS.
In the second case, you don't want to serve the web site at http://clientname.com/ because the client presumably is already hosting that and presumably http://clientname.com/otherstuff has to continue working and come from their server. So the second case is easier for you because all the work has to be done on the client's web server. But it's simple: they will just have to configure their web server to proxy http://clientname.com/store to http://mysite.com/clientname.

Setup CNAME alias from one domain to another

I'm attempting to satisfy the Cookieless domain suggestion of Google's Page Speed plugin and am running into a wall with my host who can't be bothered with the details of why it's not working. Accessing st1.dgcstatic.com should be the same as accessing st1.defunctgames.com; however, this is not the case.
Have I missed a step of configuration? Do I need to wait for DNS propagation? You can see below my steps of experimentation.
DNS Setup:
Created CNAME of st1.dgcstatic.com to point to st1.defunctgames.com on dgcstatic.com
Created A record of st1.defunctgames.com on defunctgames.com
Created sub-domain of st1.defunctgames.com on defunctgames.com
When I run a tracert st1.dgcstatic.com it produces the following result:
C:\Users\Patrick>tracert st1.dgcstatic.com
Tracing route to st1.defunctgames.com [50.22.11.10]
When I run a host st1.dgcstatic.com it produces the following result:
patrick:~ patrick$ host st1.dgcstatic.com
st1.dgcstatic.com is an alias for st1.defunctgames.com.
st1.defunctgames.com has address 50.22.11.10
And finally, using this site it seems to produce the same results of showing things configured correctly.
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=mx%3ast1.dgcstatic.com
According to all these results, the world can see my DNS changes, my host on the other hand gave me the "Wait for propagation" rigmarole When asked why this isn't working.
It looks to me that your domain names are set up correctly (st1.dgcstatic.com is an alias of st1.defunctgames.com), but the web host needs to have a mapping or configuration to know how to serve st1.dgcstatic.com content.
Both domains are resolving to 50.22.11.10, but that is most likely a shared IP address host. (Visiting http://50.22.11.10 demonstrates that it's shared - it can't resolve to your site just by the IP address.)
You'll need to configure through your webhost provider the second domain. Hosting companies do this differently; in my case it's just a matter of adding a new domain to my account (extra $1/mo), and configuring the path for HTML source files.

Access sites on IIS

I have inherited a system with a number of servers, but I have never worked with IIS before.
Currently there is a web server set up using IIS, it holds a number of 'test' sites and the server is called Staging. I have network access to the files on the server and I can login to the server via VNC. What I cannot do is view any of the sites in the 'webs' folder. I know they are all switched on and working as they have been used by my predecessor.
I have tried putting into the url bar the IP address, the IP address with the folder appended, the name of the server and still I cant access the sites.
I am behind a firewall so these sites should be accessible to anyone in the network, but obviously I am mising something.
Any tips, anything I can look at to try and find the site. Annoying thing I only need to look at one of the sites in the D:\webs\test site folder for about 5 seconds :(
Look in the IIS properties of the site and look at what IP address and host header values have been assigned to the site.

Sharing single application across a 2 subdomains in IIS7

I have an application that is currently deployed (ex. www.example.com ). However, now we have a "secure" subdomain, which will take all of the requests that need to be encrypted (ex. secure.example.com). The site that is at www.example.com is currently mapped to C:\inetpub\example.com\wwwroot\, and I've mapped secure.example.com to C:\inetpub\example.com\wwwroot\secure.
However, since secure.example.com was setup as a new website within the IIS Manager, when the secure site is visited, it displays an error since there is no web.config associated with this website; however, this is the way I want it since I want this to be a part of the application that is in the parent directory.
I think what you really meant to do was just right click on the web site for example.com and edit the bindings. In there you can add host names to that site.
Make sure you add them for port 443 which is SSL.
Map both the IIS virtual directories/web sites to the same directory, and check that are both using the same IIS application name.
(Not tried this, but can't recall seeing anything to say it would not work.)

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