Setting the Start Page of a Virtual Host

The start page is a static HTML page that is displayed in the browser when the request URL consists only of the host name and no particular file. It must be located under the root directory of the virtual host.

 

If your virtual host is mapped to the www.myhost.com address, and you have set the startpage.html to be its start page, then when the client request URL is www.myhost.com, the startpage.html page is displayed in the browser window.

However, there are some peculiarities you must observe when specifying the start page. There are certain cases when the response to the URL in the example above is not the start page, but a different HTML page. This happens when the Web Container Service is running and you have a web application deployed on that virtual host, which is mapped to the "/" URL pattern. Therefore, setting the Start Page property of a virtual host makes sense in one of the following cases:

• The Web Container Service is stopped.
• The Web Container Service is running, but all web applications that are deployed and running on that virtual host are mapped to an URL pattern different than "/".

Use the Visual Administrator tool to set the start page of a particular virtual host.

1. Open the Runtime tab of the HTTP Provider Service running on server process.
2. Choose the virtual host, the start page of which must be set.
3. Enter the HTML page location relevant to the root directory in Start Page.
4. Choose Save Properties to save your changes.