   Question about hosting multiple sites
  I'm slowly getting a list of people who want me to develop a website for them. For simplicity I think it will be easiest to always use the same host when I sign up a new client for hosting. So I'm looking into a lot of the big hosting providers to see about pricing, and more importantly, referral programs. I have a personal site with Dreamhost already, which I got for a rediculously cheap deal. Problem is, the deal is for new customers only, so I wouldnt be able to get the same deal for people that I sign up, which sucks.I was also thinking that instead of signing up every customer with a new separate 'small business' type of package, maybe I could just purchase a single medium, or large business package, and put everyone's website on the one hosting package. Are there any problems with doing this? Aside from space and bandwith, which I would monitor closely, and I dont expect it to be a problem anytime soon. I would still register a separate domain name for each client obviously. And there is a way to make things look seamless, correct? For example could I make it so the domain name www.aSmallCompany.com points to the host aSmallCompany.myOneBigDomain.com (or even myOneBigDomain.com/aSmallCompany/) but it still just shows up as www.aSmallCompany.com in the URL bar? I know there are plenty of folks on this forum who do this stuff for a living, so if you have any advice I would be very appreciative! Thanks.   
  Do yourself a favor and read about virtual hosting. Even dreamhost supports hosting multiple domains for a single hosting account, I have fours different domains on my single dreamhost account.   ;  Doesnt virtual hosting basically mean hosting multiple websites (or ip addresses) on a single physical computer? I assumed most or all web hosts were already going that anyway! Surely Im not renting an entire server for less than $100/year. I know I'm only getting a slice of a server. Can you elaborate a little about what you mean? I looked at Dreamhosts Virtual Private Servers, but it doesnt seem to be the same thing that I'm talking about. They are more secure and robust because you are isolated from the other people sharing your physical server. But what I'm looking for is a single hosting package, and a mechanism for seamlessly hosting multiple sites on that one package. Sorry if I'm being thick but I dont see it!   ;  There's a difference between virtual private servers (You get a virtual machine to do with what you want) and virtual hosts (running multiple domains on the same webserver).   ;  Pretty much all decent hosting companies do what you're asking for which is hosting multiple domains under a single package. Dreamhost DOES support this. Just go into your control panel and choose Add Domain / Subdomain. As long as the DNS for the server is pointed to the appropriate Dreamhost server, you can host the website there right alongside your other domains. You can even register multiple domains on that single account and manage it all through Dreamhost.   ;  1and1 has a simple plan. Basically you can create tons of subdomains and FTP accounts and map DNS names to folders and clients under 1 plan. So you can quickly create a site and if a user needs FTP access you can give them. Not sure if 1and1 is good for anything other than hobby stuff, but I imagine most hosting places offer this.My brother has my site along with like 10 other people hosted on his plan.   ;  Cool, its all sounding pretty good!Next qustion, is there a way for all these sites on the shared host to share things like JS and CSS files? Or do I have to copy my favorite JS and CSS stuff for each site I create?   ;Quote:Original post by AndreTheGiantCool, its all sounding pretty good!Next qustion, is there a way for all these sites on the shared host to share things like JS and CSS files? Or do I have to copy my favorite JS and CSS stuff for each site I create?Cross site links to shared resources sometimes works. Sometimes doesn't, a lot of that depends on security settings of the respective browsers, etc. If you have the appropriate level of access to the server, you can create hard links to a folder where you store shared resources, thus enabling each domain to see those shared resources.   ;Quote:Next qustion, is there a way for all these sites on the shared host to share things like JS and CSS files? Or do I have to copy my favorite JS and CSS stuff for each site I create?The way I would do it on dreamhost is set up your dreamhost user with a shell account. then its just a matter of putting your all of your shared stuff in ~/shared/css and ~/shared/&#106avascript then using `ls -s ~/shared/css ~/www.yourdomain.com/sharedcss` or whatever you want to call it   ;  For web hosting you have the following three concepts:1 - Web Hosting Package2 - Dedicated Servers3 - Virtual Servers1 - Web Hosting PackageA web hosting package is an allocated amount of hard disk space, bandwidth transfer, sql databases  etc on either a dedicated or virtual server. 2 - Dedicated ServerA dedicated server is a physical machine, which can either be sold directly to a customer to do what they want with, can be partitioned into virtual machines, which again are sold on to customers to do what they want with, or can be partitioned into web hosting packages. At present you have a web hosting package on a dedicated server hosted by dreamhosts3 - Virtual ServerA virtual server appears as a normal server, and can again be further partitioned into web hosting packages. The virtual server will be hosted on a dedicated server.---Each website should have its own web hosting package, while it is possible to host multiple sites within a single package, it probably isnt the best idea, and is probably against the T&C of the hosting company. If you want more than one website, you need a virtual server. If you have a virtual server, you essentially become a web hosting company, like dreamhosts. You can then create multiple web hosting packages that you can "sell" to your customers.   