This chapter will describe the design of a web site that we will set as our goal for this course and discuss a small amount of theory.
Site description: We will describe the web site that we want to create. This will be a website with a number of modern features. In particular we will demand the facility to run multiple virtual hosts (that is, different websites running off the same server).
Virtual hosting: There will be a brief diversion while we describe exactly how virtual hosting is possible. There are a variety of different ways to achieve this goal.
We are going to describe the server in the terms that a manager would use to describe it: rather vague. This is an excuse for this course to introduce new features one at a time.
Sites: We are told that the server must serve two web sites. One, www.dept.cam.ac.uk, for a main department site and one, prg.dept.cam.ac.uk, for Department's 'Prevarication Research Group'; the corresponding web pages will be under the control of two different groups of users.
Facilities: The "usual facilities" should be provided. This is too vague a specification in reality, but it is typically all the average manager will ever ask for. In this course we will assume that this means index pages, automatic directory listing, user home pages and access controls. To illustrate how to create tied-down servers we will also design the server to be this and no more.
Logging: Logs should be kept for as long as possible. We will have to consider the DPA implications of this part of the specification.