please clarify "virtual hosting"

[George Toft]

Not much, really, IF you use the right software.

IMHO, what you are asking is outside of their cookie-cutter mentality.
Yes, it is easy, but will they do it?  We did this all the time at my 
last job (a web hosting company).  IF they are set up to do it, all
they have to do is run a script (less than one minute including login,
and that's for a slow typist).

It all comes down to money and stats.  What you are asking is outside
of the 95% of requests that they are set up to handle.  It is easier
to say no than to spend a couple hours setting it up.  If they pay
their SysAdmin $50/hr (salary + benefits) and it takes him/her two 
hours, they are out $100.  How long will it take them to recover $100
from your account?  Ten months?  It's not worth it to them because 
that's how long it will take them to recover their investment, 
meanwhile, they've lost out on the revenue they would have collected.  
They would rather say no, or even let you go than to embark on a 
venture that sets them back ten months in revenue.

If enough people ask for it, which puts the request into the 95% 
category, they'll set it up, or lose business to those who will set
it up.

At my last job, that one minute (one time) script brought in $10/month.
I had the account set up script automated, and that brought in anywhere
from $50-$300, depending on the account.  One minute of my time made
the company $50-300.  Pretty cool.

George

"David P. Schwartz" wrote:
> 
> I'm wondering what is the relationship between virtual hosting of a web site domain vs. a
> mailbox domain
> 
> I have had an account on impulsedata.com, which is an ISP in town here.  They host a few
> domains of mine, all of which are mapped to the same place (one web site, lots of
> aliases).  All of the email gets mapped to my main userid at impulsedata.com.
> 
> I've played a bit with a non-dedicated system hosted on a Cobalt RaQ3 and RaQ4.  I can
> route a domain by changing the DNS entries at DirectNIC or InterNIC, and the host needs to
> know what the domain name is so they can set things up there.  This works for single
> domains.  Neither host would support aliases of either web or email domains.
> 
> Some hosts advertise that they'll allow virtual hosting of multiple domains on one site
> (like what I'm doing at ImpulseData.com right now), but they they say they won't allow
> multiple email domains.  IOW, I can set up a main virtual host as abc.com, then aliases of
> abc.net, def.com, and def.net, but they won't allow email to the latter three to be
> delivered.
> 
> I know that you can flip things around from Apache's conf's, like fred.abc.com vs.
> www.abc.com/~fred.  But how are these kinds of things handled for email?  I get the
> impression email routing is handled differently, although the domain naming seems like it
> ought to be subordinate to the web routing.
> 
> Thanks
> -David
> 
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