virtual web hosts and public_html

[Tim Wilson <wilson@chemsun.chem.umn.edu>]

Hey everyone,

I think I mentioned at the last TCLUG meeting that I had convinced our
SysAdmin to use Linux/Apache for our district's web server. We've been
meeting a little to plan it. Just a couple days ago I helped him install
RH6.0 on an old Pentium box to test it out using some virtual hosts.

We're going to create a different virtual host for each school so that
visitors can point their browsers to sibley.isd197.k12.mn.us or
mendota.isd197.k12.mn.us (for Mendota Elem. School). We will select a
person who will be the official web master for each building and will give
them an account on the web server. Additionally, we'd like to give
individual teachers space for classroom web pages on their school's
"virtual" web server.

So, let's say that Joe Smith is a 5th grade teacher at Mendota and Susie
Jones teaches at Sibley. Each person would have their own account on the
server and would put their personal web pages in a 'public_html' folder in
their home directory so that Apache could serve it up. How do we tell
Apache that sibley.isd197.k12.mn.us/~jones is one page and
mendota.isd197.k12.mn.us/~smith is the other? In other words, how will
Apache properly associate a particular user's public_html folder with a
particular virtual host?

BTW, our SysAdmin was very impressed when we installed mars_nwe on the
server to emulate a NetWare 3.11 server in about 30 min. Our idea is to
allow users to mount their home directory on the Linux server via their
regular NetWare login. Novice computer users should be able to simply drag
and drop their web pages to a network folder and have them available. He
was very impressed with how easy it was to set up. He's must be used to
working with commercial software. :-)

Later,
Tim

--
Timothy D. Wilson			"A little song, a little dance,
University of MN, chem. dept.		a little seltzer down your 
wilson@chem.umn.edu			pants."   -Chuckles the Clown
Phone: (612) 625-9828                       as eulogized by Ted Baxter