Re: Web server name?

Gina Faber (gfaber@Teknowledge.COM)
Sat, 21 Jan 1995 07:24:52 +0100


Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 03:37:41 +0100
Errors-To: listmaster@www0.cern.ch
Reply-To: narnett@verity.com
Originator: www-talk@info.cern.ch

When our search engine displays results lists from Web documents, we need
to display the source of the documents in the list. Right now, all we can
offer is the name of the host, which may or may not be meaningful... and
usually rather ugly.

Thus, it's occurred to us that we'd like to see a way to ask a server
"What's your name?" and get back something like "Verity Corporate
Information."

Is anyone else thinking about this? Shall we just forge ahead and make a
proposal for a way to implement this? I'm thinking that perhaps it should
be an element in the header of the default document. Ideas?

Nick

Nick,

Thinking that the "long name" for the server was already in the NCSA
httpd configuration files, I figured it would be a small chore to edit
the httpd code to grab that and stuff it in a variable (in the header,
as you suggest) on requests.

A quick look revealed that I was thinking of the wusage configuration file,
which has a variable "Name of your server as it should be presented".

Assuming the addition of such a variable to the configuration file,
it still is only a small step to throw that variable in the header.
I agree with your proposal, and think it would be most useful.

Gina Faber