New Website Domain Help

[pritchardavid]

We are becoming an Academy in Janurary

 

Our current website domain is www.ockendonschool.com

Our new website domain is www.theockendonacademy.com

 

I would like 4 subdomains setup for this new domain, would like the subdomains not to have to have parts at the end of the address ie owa, rdweb

 

vle.theockendonacademy.com (Runs from the same server has the school website)

This is for Moodle (Server 2008R2)

At the momment this is a folder is in our wwwroot IIS folder

Link to this at the momment is www.ockendonschool.com/moodle

 

remote.theockendonacademy.com

This is for our Remote Desktop Web Connection (Server 2008R2)

Link to this at the momment is https://213.38.46.81/RDWeb

 

mail.theockendonacademy.com

This is our Exchange 2007 Server (Server 2003R2)

Link to this at the momment is https://212.158.104.50/owa

 

eportal.theockendonacademy.com

This is for external access to ePortal (Server 2003R2)

Link to this at the momment is http://10.146.64.250/eportal/index.jsp

 

 

I havent done no changes with the council who we get our internet connection with yet.

 

I did give our support company access to our domain registration site, so they can make changes for this to work, but im not too quite happy with what they have done for it.

 

If you look at the attached screenshot of the DNS management from our domain registration site, you will see what they have done.

 

Second one is because the writing box went to the right because the line is too long

[ATTACH=CONFIG]8847[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]8846[/ATTACH]

 

Ok problems....

 

Eportal - puts the eportal part at the end, which i dont want and the it redirects to "http://eportal.theockendonacademy.com/eportal/index.jsp" after.

And sometimes it dont redirect and you end up with an error page.

So to me this is just a redirect and not a subdomain.

 

Remote Desktop - puts the RDWeb part at the end, which i dont want. So to me this is just a redirect and not a subdomain.

 

VLE - puts the moodle part at the end, which i dont want. So to me this is just a redirect and not a subdomain.

 

Mail - puts the owa part at the end, which i dont want. So to me this is just a redirect and not a subdomain. And it sometime doesnt change from http to https and just gives me a secure error.

 

 

Is there any change the council needs to make?

Anything I need to add to our DNS Servers?

 

 

Thanks in advance guys!

Edited December 8, 2010 by pritchardavid

[jamiesev]

When I launched our Moolde installation (moodle.kingarthurs.org.uk) I had to purchase a subdomain from our providor.

It maybe worth checking with your domain providor if you need to do the same as at the moment you only have redirects setup....

[vikpaw]

looks like the bottom part is not as you want. maybe they misunderstood the instructions and put in the existing links rather than the new ones. just the subdomain part should be fine, so long as the receiving server is set up to accept connections to that address.

[waldronm2000]

First, you'd need to be sure that the services you want don't actually need the paths at the end of the URL. If they do, then redirects are the only viable option. It may be for example that links betweek pages are absolute rather than relative, in which case the paths would be hard-coded and not optional.

 

However, assuming all links in the sites are relative, you can use either host headers or a combination of NAT and additional IP addresses to achieve what you want. The host header solution is neater, but doesn't work with HTTPS, only HTTP.

 

As an example, for your VLE, create a new site on IIS, and point the home folder of it to the moodle subfolder of wwwroot, make sure the host header is set to vle.theockendonacademy.com. You already have a host record pointing to the right place, so lose the URL redirect and it should work; just not with HTTPS.

 

Alternatively, add another static IP address to your IIS server, get your LA to NAT it to a new public IP address and open ports 80 and 443 on their firewall, then update your vle host record to point to the new public address. Set the new VLE site on IIS to point to the moodle folder as before, but this time tell it lo listen only on the private IP address that's been NATted to your new public one. This will work with HTTP or HTTPS, but you will need to create a new certificate if you want to use HTTPS.

 

PM me if you need any additional help with this.

[waldronm2000]

Also, should've mentioned, technically it's not subdomains you need, just host records which you already have, so no need to pay any extra for a subdomain.

[Admiral208]

Ive never set up anything like this before but from what i know (or dont as the case may be) dont you have to use alias (cname) records. to associate 'https://213.38.46.81/RDWeb' with 'remote.theockendonacademy.com' for example.

 

If I'm way off the mark let me know and I'll shut up. Hopefully someone might be able to expand on this a bit...

[vikpaw]

i just had to do a cname record for live@edu to prove i own a domain, just needed to add xxxyyy.domainname.com with an alias that points to domains.live.com but that alias i think could be anything.

 

it's a confusing area and the slightest mistype can be a pain, so best to talk to someone that is doing it and tell them exactly what you want / need and let them configure. but as mentioned, need to be sure the server itself i.e. iis or whatever is receiving is setup to receive the requests as you want them too.

 

one way to check is to put an entry in your hosts file and see if it works locally.

[Dageezah]

What I would do is send all the domain names to your webserver, then depending on the host header show a different website.

 

So I would make...

vle.theockendonacademy.com point at c:\wwwroot\vle\index.htm

remote.theockendonacademy.com point at c:\wwwroot\remote\index.htm

and so on....

 

this way your nameserver side of things will not need changing in the future if there are any changes (as this often takes 24 hours to update)

 

then just create a simple redirect web page at each of those locations to point redirect straight to https://213.38.46.81/RDWeb etc

[waldronm2000]

The host records should really be cnames as they point to a host that already has an existing host record, but it doesn't really matter as long as you don't try to set up reverse lookup on them all.