: Virtual Hosting

What's all the hubub? Virtual Hosting allows you to have a domain name just like the big boys but for the same low monthly hosting cost.

http://www.you!.com

Note: The explanations and special considerations outlined below can be considered all but unnecessary at this time.   All major browsers and systems fully support virtual hosting.  It is the most cost effective way to host a domain name.  But, if you'd like to see the sordid history of virtual hosting, read on.

How does it work?

The most popular browsers (Netscape 2 and above, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Lynx 2.5 and above) pass a variable to the web server (HTTP_HOST) which contains the domain name being used to access your site (www.yourdomain.com). Speedsoft's server software sees this variable and redirects the request to your directory. The viewer only sees your domain name, they never know that the request is actually going through Speedsoft. To make this work your domain name uses the same IP address as Speedsoft.

What Are the Benefits?

1. Super Low Cost for your own domain name!
2. All of the benefits of a Speedsoft account.
3. Use any email alias you want, like "anyname@yourdomain.com" and it will be forwarded to your default home email address
4. Have any other email aliases forward to other home email addresses.

What Are the Drawbacks?

This particular point is not even worth mentioning now, but again, if you are interested:

There is _one_ drawback. A small percentage of the Internet community use browsers that are incompatible with virtual hosting. If a viewer of your web site is using a browser that does not support the HTTP_HOST variable, they will pull up the home page of Speedsoft. Agreed, this is a little confusing to the viewer. However, we have a server side include script which runs on the home page that checks for the existance of the HTTP_HOST variable. If it is not present, it presents a blurb stating:

If you are wondering why you ended up at the Speedsoft home page when you were trying to get somewhere else, you probably were trying to reach one of our virtual hosting clients.

It then lists all virtual hosting clients on that particular server.

What Are the Costs?

There is a one-time setup fee for setting up or changing domain names. See the Services Page for pricing information.

Do I Need to do Anything Different to my Web Pages?

You should not put any "hard references" in your web pages to your domain name. Hard references are links containing your domain name, like:

<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/gizmo/thing.html">

Instead, you would want to use a soft reference, like:

<a href="gizmo/thing.html">

The reason is if someone accesses your page by using the speedsoft domain name (http://www.speedsoft.com/yourname/) rather than your domain name (http://www.yourdomain.com/) because of using an older browser, you want the site to still function properly.