One FQDN to rule them all

Answer

While Jahia supports one FQDN per website, it is possible to workaround that thanks to the use of URL rewrite rules at the front-end and Jahia levels BUT before going on this road, you should consider the following:

• This kind of scenario is not supported by Jahia so it's not being tested for new releases or new products
• Any new modification to the rewrite rules can have unforeseen side effects so it's strongly advised to have an automatic test suite to prevent any regression

The current scenario:

• Two FQDNs: www.company1.com and www.company2.com
• For each FQDN, three websites:
  • a "global" one, accessible through the URL https://<FQDN>/global/en/
  • two sub-sites, accessible through the URL:
    • https://<FQDN>/site1/en/
    • https://<FQDN>/site2/en/
• The websites need to be configured this way:
  
  • each website of a company has:
    • a site key starting by the "company key" then with the site key
    • a server name starting by the site key then with the domain name. The server name has to be resolved, at least at the front-end level
• HAProxy is being used at the front-end level (version 2.0.13-2)

Steps to follow:

• Update your HAProxy configuration with the following configuration:

  defaults
  	log	global
  	mode	http
  	option	httplog
  	option	dontlognull
          option  httpclose
  	retries 3
          timeout connect 300
          timeout client  1200s
          timeout server  1200s
          option http-server-close
          option forwardfor
  
  
  frontend http_front
          bind *:80
          redirect scheme https code 301 if !{ ssl_fc }
  
  frontend https_front
          bind *:443 ssl crt /etc/haproxy/key_and_cert.pem
          reqadd X-Forwarded-Proto:\ https
          default_backend https_back
  
  #Production v1.0.16
  #dns list
  acl dns_www.company1.com hdr(host) -i www.company1.com
  acl dns_www.company2.com hdr(host) -i www.company2.com
  
  acl rootpath path_reg ^/$|^/global/$|^/global/..$
  
  #language
  acl language_en req.fhdr(accept-language),language(fr;en) -m str en
  acl language_fr req.fhdr(accept-language),language(fr;en) -m str fr
  
  #/modules/forms
  acl forms path_reg ^/.*modules/forms/.*$
  
  #redirect back
  #redirects to company1 corporate website
  http-request redirect code 301 location https://www.company1.com/global/fr/ if dns_www.company1.com rootpath language_fr 
  http-request redirect code 301 location https://www.company1.com/global/en/ if dns_www.company1.com rootpath
  
  #http-request replace-uri ^/([a-z]{2})/sites/company1_([^/]+)(/.*)$ /\2/\1\3 if dns_www.company1.com
  #http-request replace-uri ^/([a-z]{2})/sites/company1_([^/]+)(/.*)$ /global/en/home/about/ if dns_www.company1.com
  
  #redirects to company2 corporate website
  http-request redirect code 301 location https://www.company2.com/global/fr/ if dns_www.company2.com rootpath language_fr 
  http-request redirect code 301 location https://www.company2.com/global/en/ if dns_www.company2.com rootpath
  
  
  #rewrites maybe use http-request set-path
  http-request replace-uri ^/(?!cms)(.*?)/([a-z]{2})/(.*) /\2/sites/company1_\1/home/\3 if dns_www.company1.com
  http-request replace-uri ^/(?!cms)(.*?)/([a-z]{2})/(.*) /\2/sites/company2_\1/home/\3 if dns_www.company2.com
  
  #set header for using right template
  acl site_company1 hdr(host) -i www.company1.com
  acl site_company2 hdr(host) -i www.company2.com
  http-request set-header shared-site company1 if site_company1
  http-request set-header shared-site company2 if site_company2
  ## Header sub-site
  http-request set-header sub-site %[capture.req.uri] if !forms
  http-request set-header sub-site %[hdr(referer)] if forms
  http-request replace-header sub-site ^https?://[^/]*(/[^/]*/[^/]*/.*)$ \1 if forms
  http-request replace-header sub-site ^/([^/]*)/?.*$ \1
  
  ## Header language
  http-request set-header sub-site-language %[capture.req.uri] if !forms
  http-request set-header sub-site-language %[hdr(referer)] if forms
  http-request replace-header sub-site-language ^https?://[^/]*(/[^/]*/[^/]*/.*)$ \1 if forms
  http-request replace-header sub-site-language ^/[^/]*/?([^/]*)/?.*$ \1
  
  ## Set the header host in order to activate the SEO for the correct website
  http-request set-header Host %[req.hdr(sub-site)].company1.com if dns_www.company1.com !forms
  http-request set-header Host %[req.hdr(sub-site)].company2.com if dns_www.company2.com !forms
  
  
  backend https_back
          compression algo gzip
          compression type text/plain text/css text/js text/xml text/javascript application/javascript application/json application/xml application/rss image/svg text/html
          server jahia1 127.0.0.1:8080 check fall 1 rise 1 inter 2s 
          balance leastconn
  	http-request set-header X-Forwarded-Port %[dst_port]
          http-request add-header X-Forwarded-Proto https if { ssl_fc }
  	http-request add-header X-CLIENT-IP %[src]

   

• Install a custom module (in our case multi-sites-rewriting) with two URL rewrite rules files (cf this generic documentation):
  • seo-urlrewrite-multi-sites-rewriting.xml
  • urlrewrite-multi-sites-rewriting.xml
• Set the property urlRewriteUseAbsoluteUrls to false in the file JAHIA_HOME/digital-factory-config/jahia/jahia.properties
• Flush completely your Internet browser cache

Known issues:

• SEO URLs are not working always as expected
• Link to a page on another website does is incorrect