Naming convention for multiple sites hosted on a single dedicated server

Question

I have several sites and several friends' sites I plan on hosting on my dedicated server (most are already established, but on a shared hosting service).

Is there a good and/or standard naming convention to use for the users?

Lets say my server's domain is foo.com a the site I want to host on it is bar.org. Should it just be foo.com/~bar/? foo.com/~bar.org/? Should I leave it up to the site's owner to decide on?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I would go with one of two patterns, depending on your usage:

1. If each person may own multiple sites, create usernames for people (like 'bob.smith' or just 'bob' depending on how many people you want to involve) and then give those users the necessary permissions to edit the site directories (or point the webserver at directories within their home).
2. If each site is owned by multiple people, create usernames for websites and then give the owners the password for the shared account.

You could even use a combination of those approaches if appropriate.

Ultimately it's up to you how you want to organise your own server.

Answer 2

If you don't have to worry about domains with different root name servers (bar.org being different from bar.com), then I'd set up virtual host with subdomain aliases for each domain so that you end up with things like bar.foo.com as it looks a bit more official than foo.com/~bar. Files/accounts can still be organized independently of this however you want.