Multiple Virtual Web Servers

As an ISP you probably want to host multiple customer Web sites on a single heitml Web server. In this respect heitml is fully integrated into the Apache server configuration. You can use all the configuration directives inside a virtual host or inside a directory section of the Apache configuration. This way you can set all heitml options for each customer separately. However you can also give heitml configuration directives outside any virtual server configuration. In this case the value is taken for all virtual servers that do not specify something else (this works just as any other Apache configuration directive).

Customers can use .htaccess files located in the document directories to set options themselves. In general customers can change only those options, that are not set explicitly inside the global configuration (heitmloverride must be set to off). This is why certain options must be specified inside the global configuration, to prevent customers to misuse them. Using the usual Apache directives, .htaccess files can be switched off, however then customers no longer can set any configuration options themselves.

Most important is the heitml directive to switch on heitml for a certain virtual Web server. The heitmlkey is important to switch of the non-commercial message appearing on the bottom of each page. You can buy heitml keys from H.E.I..

<VirtualHost demo.h-e-i.de>
heitml             on
heitmlkey  	   0dJlNz-2DyOng-3zPPN2-0yk3mJ
# set the session directory
heitmlSessionDir  /usr/local/heitml/session/demo
</VirtualHost>

The heitmlSessionDir is a temporary directory where heitml stores session information. On large sites it is useful to have a session directory per customer Web site, however do not give users access to session files by putting the session directory into a users home directory. Changing a session file might lead to a crash or to a security violation of heitml, because heitml does not check session file integrity for speed reasons.

In addition you need various global entries in httpd.conf. If you installed heitml on the main server these entries should be present already.

# The following lines are needed if the dynamic linked version 
# of heitml is used
  loadmodule heitml_module .../mod_heitml_PostgreSQL.so
# Make the .hei extension known to Apache
  addtype application/x-heitml  hei
# disallow overriding of heitml options
  heitmloverride     off
# set limits
  heitmlTimeLimit   600
  heitmlMemLimit     24000
  heitmlMemExit      2000
  DirectoryIndex        index.htm index.html index.hei