Changing host header web application URLs

Question

I have a site configured at http://www.abc.com on port 80 with host header www.abc.com. I need to create a different web application and I need to use http://www.abc.com.

Without deleting the old one, is there any way to manage through host headers/ alternate mappings?

Answer 1

This was the step i used

Created a new Webpplication www.newabc.com and in the alternate access mapping for this i used www.abc.com. and i stopped the www.abc.com which was already there

One thing i have noticed is that when we add the alternate access mapping . It did not update the host entry in IIS. I had to manually do this after that this worked

Answer 2

So could you clarify - you want both web applications to use the same host header? This is not possible but if you want the new web application to use www.abc.com and the old one to respond to a different host header (www.oldabc.com) this can be achieved.

Is this what you are after?

The basic steps are:

1. Create a new host header based web application (www.oldabc.com). Use a temporary/throwaway database when creating this web application as you will be deleting it at the end of the process e.g. WSS_Content_DeleteMeSoon
2. Detach the content database that has the root site collection you want to keep from www.abc.com using STSADM or from Central Administration. Lets call it WSS_Content_ABC and you will need this database for step 4.
3. You will need to add another content database to www.abc.com if the content database you just detached was the only one for that web application. This lets you create a new site collection in the root of www.abc.com.
4. Detach the temporary database from www.oldabc.com (WSS_Content_DeleteMeSoon created in step 1.) and attach the old content database from www.abc.com (WSS_Content_ABC) to the www.oldabc.com web application you created in step 1.
5. Final step is to delete WSS_Content_DeleteMeSoon from your SQL Server

You will need to re-run your search crawls and a few other things but that is the general process to follow. The main issue is going to be if you have lots of site collections and lots of content databases then you will need to do steps 3. and 5. for all of them.

Answer 3

Is the current www.abc.com website based on Sharepoint? If not, the easiest way is to create a different Sharepoint/web farm on which you install Sharepoint. That way the current webserver can still host the www.abc.com and the new Sharepoint farm can create a site with the hostheader www.abc.com also. As long as your internal DNS or hosts file(s) don't mess things up you'll be able to do this.

If the current site is based on Sharepoint, maybe the easiest solution is to create the site on a different port, so www.abc.com:81. I'm not much of an ISA/Forefront expert, but I think you can set those up to redirect a request to the proper site:port.

Other solution might be to just 'Stop' the current website in IIS. That way a new website will be created with the hostheader. Just remember to backup your current virtual directory and other stuff you've configured for the current website.

Also Nick Hadlee his suggestion is a good solution to your problem.