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Stanford Virtual Host Service

Overview

The Stanford Virtual Host Service lets you replace a long, unwieldy URL with one that is shorter and more descriptive of your web site’s content. These virtual URLs, also called “reserved” or “vanity” URLs, help people remember how to get to your web site and make it easier for them to type its URL into their browser. For example, a URL like http://eudora.stanford.edu/ is easier to type and quicker to identify than http://www.stanford.edu/services/eudora/

Automatic Virtual Hosting

At this time, Stanford does not provide virtual URLs in individual “person” space (i.e., for www.stanford.edu/~person web sites). However, there is an automatic virtual host sunetid.web.stanford.edu for your SUNet ID and any SUNet ID aliases you established in StanfordYou. For instance, if your SUNet ID is jdoe, you automatically have a virtual host at http://jdoe.web.stanford.edu/.

There is also a similar automatic virtual URLs for all group, department, and class websites.

• If you have a group website under http://www.stanford.edu/group/, there is an automatic virtual host setup at http://groupname.group.stanford.edu. For instance, http://medieval.group.stanford.edu/ maps to http://www.stanford.edu/group/medieval/ automatically.

• If you have a department website under http://www.stanford.edu/dept/, there is an automatic virtual host setup at http://deptname.dept.stanford.edu. For instance, http://itss.dept.stanford.edu/ maps to http://www.stanford.edu/dept/itss/ automatically.

• If you have a class website under http://www.stanford.edu/class/, there is an automatic virtual host setup at http://classname.class.stanford.edu. For instance, http://cs193i.class.stanford.edu/ maps to http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193i automatically. Note that this does not work for archived classes.

Availability

This service is available only to departments, research groups, and officially registered student groups. Please visit the following two websites to make sure your organization qualifies.

• Stanford University Organization Information
• Student Group Organizations

Note that virtual URLs can not be linked to an individual”s personal web page.

If you think your group or service should qualify for a virtual host, please put the reason and need in the comment field of the request form.

Requirements

1. The content you need the virtual URL to redirect to must be hosted on www.stanford.edu servers and not a department or group machine. Virtual URLs for content on a non-www.stanford.edu computer must be handled by the system administrators of the computer. The following exceptions to this rule apply:
   • You can request a virtual URL to go to a host outside the stanford.edu domain for services. For instance, you can request that http://sushilovers.stanford.edu
     go to
     http://www.sushilovers.org
     provided you can give a valid reason for this redirect.
   • You can request virtual URL and content proxying for non-Apache2 servers that require WebAuth. For instance, if you have an IIS server that only Stanford users should have access to, you can request that a virtual URL that will be WebAuth protected and all traffic will be proxied by the proxy servers.
2. The virtual URL host must not already be in use or reserved. For instance, if you need the URL
   http://sushilovers.stanford.edu/
   to redirect to
   http://www.stanford.edu/group/sushilovers/
   then you need to make sure that the hostname sushilovers is not already taken. You can visit StanfordWhat to check whether a machine with that hostname already exists. If the hostname already exists, you need to contact the owner or administrator of the host and ask them to relinquish the name first by removing the name from netdb.

Features

The following are features that the Virtual Host Service can provide for your virtual URL:

Redirect:

This most common type of virtual host service makes the real URL of your website show up in the browser window after the end users use the virtual URL to get to the page. If you are not sure what you need, this is probably what you are looking for.

Proxy:

The virtual URL stays in the browser window after people arrive at your page. This means that the content will travel through the proxy servers from the real website before reaching the end user's browser.

The advantage to using direct proxy is that the real URL of your website will never be displayed to the end user. The disadvantage to using direct proxy is that all requests will appear to come from the proxy servers, making log parsing and metrics analysis of your website more difficult.

WebAuth Protection:

You can specify the type and level of WebAuth protection you would like for your website. The following are the types of WebAuth protection we offer:

• Only allow members of the Stanford Community.
• Only allow members of one or more Workgroups.
• Only allow a list of specified sunetids.

Note that if you need WebAuth protection, the service must also use the Proxy feature. Also, all traffic to the proxy servers will be encrypted using the https protocol. WebAuth protection can be used in conjunction with basic protection as described below. For more information on how to use user authentication and authorization with WebAuth, please visit the WebAuth documentation and reference the Proxy Server IP Addresses page.

Basic Protection:

You can limit access to a specific domain or subdomain, commonly stanford.edu. This means that only registered computers on the Stanford University network will be allowed to access the website. This feature also requires the Proxy feature. Basic protection can be used in conjunctions with WebAuth protection.

You can specify the features you want for your virtual URL on the request form.

Details

For more details on how the Virtual Host Service works, please visit the Details and Documentation page.