The number of virtual hosts that a Freedom server is allowed to host varies depending on the type of Freedom server that you have. If you need to host more virtual hosts on your server than your current product provides, you can either upgrade to a higher-level product, or buy additional allotments of virtual hosts. If you attempt to run the provided Apache server with more virtual hosts than your Freedom server allows, you will receive an error like the following, and your Apache server will not operate:
ERROR: You have surpassed the vhost limit for this product.
Virtual hosting is provided to help you give customers a "foot-in-the-door" Web hosting option. We realize that not all of your customers will be ready for their own Freedom account when they start out, and virtual hosting provides a nice solution for them. As your clients"" needs grow, we hope that you will become a Web.com Reseller and resell them their own Freedom servers.
There are a few limitations to virtual hosting that you should be aware of before offering this service to your clients:
Only one SSL certificate can be used on a Freedom server. This means that if you install a private SSL certificate for your own domain name, all of the virtual hosts on your server must use this certificate for SSL connections. Using an SSL certificate with a virtual host whose name does not match the one on the certificate results in a warning message being displayed on most Web browsers.
Email aliases and account names are shared among all of the domains on a Freedom account. Because of this it is important to understand the use of virtual user table as described in the email chapter of this guide.
Virtual hosting was made possible by the introduction of HTTP/1.1 in 1997. Anyone using an older browser that is not HTTP/1.1 compliant is unable to view virtually hosted sites. Generally speaking, most standard Web browsers support virtual hosts. Netscape Navigator 2.0+ and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0+ will view your virtual hosts without problem. Any other browser that is HTTP/1.1 compliant should also be able to access your virtual hosts. The small number of non-compliant Web browsers will display your primary Web site regardless of which domain is requested. However, considering that together Netscape and MSIE comprise about 95% of the market share, and that most of the remaining Web browsers are HTTP/1.1 compliant, this usually isn't a problem.
Some search engines and "Web-crawler" spiders that do not support the HTTP/1.1 protocol will not be able to index your virtual hosts"" Web sites. Most major search engines do not have this problem, but you should be aware that there are some out there that do.
Providing Web hosting for people that you do not personally know and trust on your Freedom server can potentially expose you to a security risk. If you conduct e-commerce on your server, or store sensitive customer or other data, we encourage you to eliminate risk by not hosting additional Web sites on your server unless you manage them yourself.