TechNote (Archived)

Multiple domains pointing to one IP address (Virtual servers) causes Contribute to not connect properly

Issue

If you are connecting to multiple domains that all point to one IP address, then you may encounter a connection problem in which Contribute can only connect to one of the sites, even though multiple sites were defined correctly when you created new site connections.

For example, you may have three different site connections, but see the same homepage in all three sites when, in fact, they are completely independent of each other and not related.

Reason

Contribute automatically detects the IP address and domain names of the site the connection is established with, so Contribute can connect to them without any errors. In some cases, when multiple domains use the same IP address, Contribute interprets the multiple sites as one.

Solution

In order to fix this problem indefinitely, you will need to remove the IP address from the Web Addresses tab located in the Contribute Administration panel.

Choose Edit > My Connections (Windows) or Contribute > My Connections (Mac OS).
Enable the site if it is not already enabled and click "Administer..." (Windows)or "Configure" (Mac OS)in the upper right corner of the panel.
Select the Web Server link on the left column.
Under the web addresses tab, remove any IP addresses that might be there and add the domain name instead if it is not already added.
Re-establish connection to all sites.