Virtual Roots
If you just want to jump in and start customizing your site then you can put off knowing
about virtual roots and substitute the word media every time you see the term virtual
root. Once you are comfortable with your ccHost installation you will at least want to know
about virtual roots because it is a very powerful and flexible feature of your installation.
Why?
Your ccHost site can be configured to look like many different
sites with just a few menu selections and no changes to your
web server configuration.
Why do this? Let's say you are running a remix community as
your main site but also want to run a contest or you
mainly run contests and you also want to have a personal
'media weblog' on the side -- or -- whatever.
More than half of all settings in ccHost are specific to each virtual root. That means each
virtual root can have it's own skin, it's own menus, home page, admins, page
content, navigator tabs, rules for file naming, MP3/ID3 tagging, etc., etc.
By default a virtual root will inherit settings from the main root (media) until you override them.
This is a very powerful feature but can lead to plenty of confusion if not taken into account when dealing
with virtual roots. (Prediction: you will forget this admonition, then you'll get frustrated, then
you'll remember it and we can say 'I told you so.')
Creating a Virtual Root
To create a new virtual root go to Manage Site/Virtual ccHost.
The only initial requirement will be the core name of the new virtual root. Make it a good one because it will be seen in many hundreds of urls.
Make it short, lowercase, alpha only, easy to type
('aqz' is not easy to type, try it) but descriptive like 'albums' or 'cindysart'.
Deleting a Virtual Root
As of this writing there is no way (except pro grammatically) to delete a virtual root.
Scripts can be made available from ccHost developers if you are really stuck but otherwise
the best thing to do is ignore it, that is: never refer to it in any menu or navigator tab
and your users will never know about it.
See Your Virtual Root
After naming the virtual root you can then use that name in the URL address to access it. For example,
let's say you name your new root myroot, to access that root simply tack it on
to the domain and directory:
http://example.com/cchost?ccm=/myroot OR
http://example.com/cchost/myroot
