Reverse Proxy Issues w/ DNN 8.0 Website

[SEOAdmin Profile]

Hello,
Our primary goal is moving our blog from a sub-domain (blog.example.com) to a sub-directory (www.example.com/blog/) of our primary eCommerce domain, on a separate server utilizing reverse proxy & URL rewriting. We are very close to achieving the desired result but have had some issues with admin errors, file compression output errors, internal site search result links and dynamically generated related article links within module/widget. Also, we need to ensure that our configuration can handle site-wide SSL and unified a user account login/signup functionality between both sites.

Issues:
• In DNN Admin after saving a change to a page/module in the pop-up window it redirects to a 500 error. (*But the change still saves to the database.)
• In DNN Admin the "More Settings" links to a pop-up window that doesn't load and shows a 500 error.
• File compression output when enabled gives 500.x errors - Reverse Proxy and/or Header Response causing conflicts.
• Internal site search result links, not being rewritten by outbound rule
• Dynamically generated links within the "Related Articles" module/widget, not being rewritten by outbound rule
• SSL Passthru/Handoff between the 2 servers? *Is there any special configuration needed?
• Unified a user account login "keep-alive" between both servers?
• Cookies & visitor tracking, need to ensure a new session isn't started when jumping from one site/server to the other & vise-versa.
• On occasion a rewrite/redirect loop issue also comes up.
• Optimized for minimal server resource usage/load.
• HTTP HeaderResponse or any crawlable data on the site must not include any references to blog.example.com

Current Server Specs, Software & Configurations:
*Note: We are not in a position to migrate/upgrade our Primary eCommerce Server/Software (i.e. IIS 6) at this time & are trying to find alternative backward compatible solutions that can work within these limitations.

Primary eCommerce Server (Web 1)

OS:
• Windows Server 2003

IIS 6:
• Binded Domains: Only non-www & www of domain
• Site Framework: Classic ASP & .Net

URL Rewrite & Reverse Proxy Software:
• HeliconTech ISAPI Rewrite 3.0

*Current Reverse Proxy Rule
• RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} (www\.)?example\.com
• RewriteRule ^/blog(.*)$ http://blog.example.com/blog/$1 [P,NC,H,K,L]

Secondary DNN Server (Web 2)

OS:
• Windows 2012

IIS 8:
• Binded Domains: subdomain blog.(.*) & IP

URL Rewrite Software:
• URL Rewrite 2.0

*Current Outbound Rule
Precondition:
• IsHTML”
• Using Regular Expressions
• Match All
• Condition input: {RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE}
• Type: Matches the Pattern
• Pattern: ^text/html
Match:
• Matching Scope:“Response”
• Content: “Matches the Pattern”
• Using: “Exact Match”
• Pattern: “blog.example.com”
• Ignore case (Checked)
Action:
• Action Type: Rewrite
• Value: www.example.com
• Stop processing of subsequent rules (checked)

DNN Installation:
Version: 8.0.2 (*installed in the /blog directory as an application in IIS, under blog.example.com website)

Portal Alias:
• Primary: www.example.com/blog

The HTMLEditor (CK) Config:
• set to use relative link paths
• BaseHref is set to www.* domain

Internal DNN Rewrite Providers: (these were changed from advanced to standard in web.config to get it semi-working because of a conflict with our outbound rewrite rule)
• DNNFriendlyUrl (set to "standard")
• OpenFriendlyUrl (set to "standard")

DNN Themes/Extentions Installed:
• DNNgo xBlog
• DNNgo xPlugin
• DNNgo xGalleryPro
• Theme: SP20047 Unlimited Responsive Multi-Purpose Skin 033

*PS: A lot of research has already been done to resolve these issues, but have yet to find a solution that is compatible with IIS 6.0, ISAPI Rewrite 3.0 & our other current server/software configurations. (Helicon Ape, ARR + URL Rewrite on IIS 7+, etc...)

So any detailed config changes, rewrite rules, flags, DNN extensions or server software recommendations, that we may have not found already, would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jordan

[Yaroslav]

Hello.

I suppose most of your problems come from redirects and probably cookies sent by the backend server. To proxy them correctly you will need Ape instead of ISAPI_rewrite on a frontend (proxy) server. Then you can use mod_proxy directives, which provide more features that you need: http://www.helicontech.com/ape/doc/mod_ ... assReverse
SSL passthrough is not possible. You will need to configure SSL on the frontend (proxy) server. Securing the connection between frontend and backend is really an unnecessary overhead.