Multiple domains on one account

I have posted this in pre-sales forum but maybe nobody noticed, because there is no answer. The time of my evaluation period is ticking, so please, could someone give me advice on this:

I have little experience with ASP and Windows hosting and I'd like to have more clear picture about hosting more than 1 domain on discountasp.

1. Let's say I have an account registered with discountasp for domain main.com and I also want to host a website for domain secondary.com within the same account.

So, let's assume I install the following web sites:
a) for www.main.com in folder /html/main
b) for www.secondary.com in folder /html/secondary

I read the KB here and it says: "When the requests are redirected using an ASP file, the URL in browser for redirected domains will show the correct domain name and the directory name where the request is being redirected."

I don't understand what the word "correct" means in this context. If someone types in the browser the url http://www.secondary.com, does it mean that the address in the browser window will change to the "correct" one http://www.main.com when he gets the page ??

2. I have read in another thread that in case of 2 domains, it is possible to setup an e-mail redirection (root pointer?) so that the main domain receives all e-mails for the secondary domain, but it is impossible to send e-mail from the secondary domain.

This is very new to me, coming from my php/apache hosting and I don't understand how to deal with it (apart from buying a new account for each domain). Is there any possible setup to have e-mails for these 2 domains work as expected?

3. This is a summary question: is discountasp (and maybe other Windows/IIS hosting) designed primarily to serve a single domain for a single account? I ask this because in my Apache based hosting there are unlimited possibilities for e-mail, subdomains, domains etc. out of the box for one account, and here it looks like one account is designed to serve just one domain.

 

...Probably, maybe, kinda seems like...Nobody replied because;
Well, it takes a lot of time to answer this one. ;-)

I'm the Court Jester here, but yes it can be done.

In classic ASP (v3) with server directives I did domain masking here for years.

Had a site with multiple domains, 3 were used for separate sites. AKG, SDK, and TAB

First site AKG would look at the incoming request and then redirect to the proper site.
All the domains were hosted with GoDaddy.
Added to DASP Control Panel, one primary and others pointers.

You can do the same thing now with Classic ASP, ASP.NET or PHP.
You can do further on the IIS7 accounts here with the URL Rewriter.

Let's say you add one root domain called One and you add two pointers, Two and Three
All are .com's

You filter the incoming request and redirect to whichever domain(site) is proper.

There are many ways to do this and they all work on DASP servers, with IIS7 being the best choice.

Yep, I'm tired now, fingers and mind, but I hope that helped a bit.
All the best,
Mark
* DASP = DiscountASP.NET

 

Thanks for the info!

According my first question, do I understand correctly? After buying domain pointers, I will be able to maintain separate sites for separate domains, and there will be no redirection visible to the visitor of the sites in the browser address url.

If yes, will this be done on IIS side, by IIS admins, or will I have to set it up in ASP.NET code (like using iframes or #Include File statements )? (i'd prefere not to mess with it in code of course).

According my question about e-mails. Here is another thread with a little different question, but also dealing with two domains on same account. It is said: "If you want individual mail for each domain, you'll have to either open an individual account for each domain, or just host the email for either domain elsewhere. "

So domain pointers work only for www and not for e-mail? It would be a little mess to order a separate account, at a separate hosting company, just for an e-mail.

 

..Well, DASP does offer Email aliases now but I haven't messed with that.
You are better off with individual accounts if you need that, I imagine.

The other question, about what will show in the browser URL...
Once you have the pointers you can shoot the incoming traffic to the domain, yes.
It will differ some however as you move them to a folder for each pointer but you can also use sub-domains, which are an additional addon.

The One, Two Three domains I mentioned could look like this in the browser, even if the visitor is moving around in pages.
http://One.com/ , http://www.One.com/
http://Two.com/two/
http://Three.com/three/

See how the root domain will look?
Then the pointers, they can keep their domain name but they use folders.

You will need to create code for this, there's no "switch" you can throw to do this.
By default your root domain and the pointers point at your site root until you code differently.

There is sample code in the FAQ's and you can catchup on the newer coolness with tutorials on the official IIS7 site: http://www.iis.net/
Hope that helped a bit at least,
Mark