Virtual Hosts and Hosting Types

Dmitry Bystrov

3 years ago

Depending on how you intend to use a site created in Plesk, for example,
to host web pages or to forward HTTP requests to another site, you can
choose from three hosting types that define the structure of a virtual
host created for this site. The hosting types are the following:

Website hosting. When you choose this type of hosting, Plesk
creates a virtual host (disk space on the local server) for a
customer. Customers store their files on a virtual host and run their
websites without having to purchase a server or dedicated
communication lines.
Standard forwarding. In this case, Plesk creates a reduced virtual
host that does not store its owner’s files and directories. This host
is used for redirecting requests to another network resource. When
users try to access the domain, Plesk forwards them to another URL.
This URL will be shown in their browsers.
Frame forwarding. In this case, Plesk creates a reduced virtual
host that does not store its owner’s files and directories. Unlike
standard forwarding, frame forwarding virtual hosts show the
requested URL in a browser, not the actual one. Plesk uses HTML
frames to show the pages of another site with the requested URL.

The virtual host structure differs depending on hosting type:

Domains with a website hosting type have a directory called document
root where the website files are stored. The configuration of such a
virtual host looks like this:

 <VirtualHost 10.0.69.4:80>
    ServerName "domainXX.tst:443"
        ServerAlias  "www.domainXX.tst"
        UseCanonicalName Off
<IfModule mod_suexec.c>
    SuexecUserGroup "domainXX.tst" "psacln"
</IfModule>
    ServerAdmin  "admin@mailserver.tst"
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/vhosts/domainXX.tst/httpdocs"
    CustomLog /var/www/vhosts/domainXX.tst/statistics/logs/access_ssl_log plesklog
    ErrorLog  "/var/www/vhosts/domainXX.tst/statistics/logs/error_log"
........................................................................

Standard forwarding domains just contain a forwarding address in the
configuration file. No space for storing files is allocated. The
configuration of such a virtual host looks like this:

<VirtualHost 10.0.69.2:80>
        ServerName "SFdomain.tst.tst"
            ServerAlias "www.SFdomain.tst.tst"
        ServerAdmin  "admin@mailserver.tst"
        RedirectPermanent / "http://easytofinddomain.tst/"
</VirtualHost>

Frame forwarding domains have a document root with a single file
index.html with the <FRAMESET> tag that defines…

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