There’s a number of different ways to handle this. First, though, you need to understand the relationship between domain registration, DNS, and hosting. They are three different things, and although they are often done by the same company or service, they do not need to be.
Registration
Your hostname is registered with IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) through a registrar. All this means is that it is yours, and nobody else can use it. It has nothing to do with anything else. If you register with GoDaddy, but host and DNS elsewhere, you still need to pay to keep the name.
DNS
Your name is associated with one or more IP (Internet Protocol) addresses. These generally look like 192.168.1.2, and they are the true names of the Internet. DNS lets you say, “this machine 1.1.1.2 is mail.example.com” and “that machine 1.1.1.3 is www.example.com”. (DNS also lets you say that one numerical IP address is responsible for a thousand different named Web sites. This rock is the foundation for a number of fortunes in the hosting space, because it makes shared hosting possible.) DNS also lets you set up a special pointer called an MX record, which defines a particular machine as being the responsible party for all of your e-mail.
In many cases, when you register your domain name, the registrar will sell you a package that includes DNS, and often also hosting. The fact that they do this doesn’t mean that that’s the only way to do things. It’s not even a very good idea, because if one of their services goes down, then all of them may, and then you have no way to recover until they do.
Hosting
A server, usually running Apache, responds to requests for a particular domain name by locating the (configured) matching folder on its disk and serving up the requested file. It’s usually a lot more complex than that, but at its core, that’s how it works. As mentioned earlier, an Apache server can handle thousands of individual sites without breaking a sweat. If you’re Apple, then the telescope is turned around the other way, and you have dozens of Apache servers all hosting the same site, and a device sitting in front of them called a load balancer that decides which server will get the next request. In order for this part to work, the other two must be properly configured.
Now as to how this works together to manage your own case, here’s an example from my own far-flung empire of Apache servers.
One of my servers is named test.walterdavisstudio.com. It’s a Digital Ocean droplet, which means that it is a virtual private server, I have root on it, and nobody else is sharing its resources. I am my own hosting provider, in other words.
ActionsForge.com is set in the DNS (can’t recall where that runs, may be CloudFront for that one) to be a CNAME (like an alias) for test.walterdavisstudio.com, so the requests for that address are routed over the Internet to my server. But the requests retain the original hostname, so when it gets to my server, Apache knows which site to show.
That same server also hosts the billing application for Inlay, FreeCounter, and FreewayCast. And I have other servers, naturally.
So your client could keep on registering their domain where they do, and then they could configure their DNS to point their domain at your server. You would need to add a configuration in your cPanel or similar to recognize requests for that domain name, but once that’s done, your server would host their site as a separate domain from your own. There would be no need for “cloaking” frames or other hacky work-arounds.
If your own hosting setup is a “cheap and cheerful” shared server, where the owners lock down what you can do with your account, you may still be able to make this work by creating a subdomain within your own domain, then editing the configuration to add a ServerAlias directive allowing that subdomain to accept requests for your client. I don’t know if this can be done in an .htaccess file (which would be the ultimate way to do it while nobody is looking) or if it needs to be done in the Apache configuration, but the basic idea is that you set up clientname.yourdomain.com and then add ServerAlias clientname.com to that subdomain’s configuration.
Walter
On Apr 16, 2016, at 9:28 AM, neil.west1 email@hidden wrote:
They wouldn’t understand the situation David, so it’s pointless even bringing it up with them.
But just for the sake of clarity, who is hosting the site if not us? Do the site and domain have to be with the same provider to be recognised as ‘hosted’?
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