Portal hosting puts your association’s portal sites on the internet at addresses that belong to you. When Rhythm sets up hosting for your Rhythm account, it creates one dedicated web distribution and points every domain name on your hosting record to it. Members can then reach your sites quickly and securely on your own domain, rather than on a generic Rhythm address.
What Hosting Sets Up for You
After hosting is in place, the following behavior applies to every portal address on your Rhythm account, and you cannot switch it off:
- Every domain name you have added answers. The distribution responds to each domain name on your hosting record, so any of those domains can carry your portal.
- One shared portal application runs behind all of them. Every association’s portal uses the same underlying portal application, so one account cannot run a different or older version.
- Every address is served over a secure connection. When someone opens a plain, unencrypted portal address, Rhythm sends them to the secure address instead, using the certificate on your hosting record. Rhythm does not automatically detect expired certificates, so visitors will see a browser certificate warning until someone replaces the certificate.
- Your portal sits behind Rhythm's web application firewall. The firewall protects every account’s distribution, not only yours, and you do not configure it separately for your account.
- Delivery is optimized for speed. The distribution responds only to read requests and caches heavily. It does not use cookies or query strings to decide what to serve, so unchanged pages load quickly from cache instead of being rebuilt on every visit.
- Rhythm also gives your portal two of its own domain names. In addition to any domain names you add yourself, every hosting record includes two Rhythm-managed addresses that point to the same distribution. These addresses sit alongside your own domains, not in place of them.
What Members See When a Page or File Cannot Be Found
The distribution sends every address that is not an image, stylesheet, or other known file directly to the portal application. That means a visitor who opens a mistyped or outdated link does not see a bare server error page. Instead, the portal application opens and decides what to show, using the same start-up sequence described in How a Portal Site Starts and Finds Its Pages.
Because of this design, the response alone does not tell you whether a file is missing or exists. What visitors see for a broken link depends on your site’s own not-found handling, not on the hosting layer.
Certificates and Domains Are a Separate Concern
Portal hosting needs a valid certificate that covers every domain name on the hosting record. If the certificate does not cover a domain, or is not valid for the distribution, a deployment that adds that domain fails instead of partially succeeding.
Hosting does not automate certificate checks, certificate renewals, or domain name changes. You are responsible for checking and renewing your certificate, and for adding or changing domain names when needed.
If you move your portal from one custom subdomain to another, set up DNS for the new subdomain too. Create the same kind of DNS record you used for the old subdomain, typically a CNAME, and point it to the new address. Updating the login or portal URL in your Rhythm account's settings does not make the new address work by itself.
Completing SSL certificate issuance or renewal for a custom domain can also require a DNS CNAME record from the certificate authority. This record proves domain control validation and is separate from anything configured in Rhythm. If a certificate renewal seems stuck, check whether that validation record still needs to be added at your domain host.
A custom portal address can become unreachable if the DNS record at your domain host is missing, removed, or changed, even when Rhythm's side of the setup has not changed. If a custom domain that used to work suddenly stops responding, check the DNS record at your domain host before assuming something changed in Rhythm.
Third-party notices about certificate authorities or other vendors do not necessarily apply to your Rhythm-hosted portal or microsite. Rhythm manages certificates for your hosted domains separately from those outside vendor changes, so check with Rhythm support if you are unsure whether a vendor notice affects your account.
How Hosting Relates to Everything Else
Portal hosting is the foundation for everything else in Portals. Sites, pages, menus, assets, and site settings are all served from the distribution that hosting sets up.
A Rhythm-hosted portal or microsite can run on infrastructure that is completely separate from your organization’s main public website, which may be hosted elsewhere. Performance issues or an outage on your main website do not necessarily mean something is wrong with your Rhythm-hosted portal, and the reverse is also true.
If your organization also shows a member directory on its main external website, that directory may be separate from the directory in your Rhythm portal and may update differently. Changes you make in Rhythm are not guaranteed to appear there unless that external site is specifically integrated to pull from Rhythm.
Warning
Opening a Rhythm portal inside an iframe on another website is possible, but it is not a reliably supported way for visitors to reach your portal. In some cases, it fails intermittently, and this has been observed more often in Safari. Rhythm does not recommend embedding a portal this way because it does not create a good visitor experience. Have visitors open the portal directly instead.
Requesting hosting for the first time, and asking Rhythm to rebuild your distribution after a change, are covered in How Portal Hosting Provisioning Works.
Portal hosting puts your association's portal sites on the internet at addresses that belong to you. When Rhythm sets up hosting for your account, it builds one dedicated web distribution and points every domain name on your hosting record to it. Members can then reach your sites quickly, securely, and on your own name instead of a generic Rhythm address.
What Hosting Sets Up for You
Once hosting is in place, the following behavior applies to every portal address on your account, and none of it can be switched off:
- Every domain name you have added answers. The distribution responds to each domain name recorded on your hosting record, so any of them can carry your portal.
- One shared portal application runs behind all of them. Every association's portal runs the same underlying portal application, so one account cannot run a different or older version.
- Every address is served over a secure connection. A plain, unencrypted request to your portal is automatically sent to the secure address instead, using the certificate on your hosting record. Rhythm does not automatically detect expired certificates, so if yours lapses, visitors will see a certificate warning in their browser until someone replaces it.
- Your portal sits behind Rhythm's web application firewall. The firewall protects every account's distribution, not only yours, and you do not configure it per account.
- Delivery is optimized for speed. The distribution answers only read requests and caches heavily. It does not use cookies or query strings to decide what to serve, so pages that have not changed load quickly from cache instead of being rebuilt on every visit.
- Rhythm also gives your portal two of its own domain names. In addition to any domain name you add yourself, every account's hosting record includes two Rhythm-managed addresses that point to the same distribution. These addresses exist alongside your own domain names, not instead of them.
What Members See When a Page or File Cannot Be Found
The distribution hands every address that is not an image, stylesheet, or other known file directly to the portal application. Because of that, a visitor who opens a mistyped or outdated link does not land on a bare server error page. Instead, the portal application opens and decides what to show, following the same start-up sequence described in How a Portal Site Starts and Finds Its Pages.
One side effect of this design is that you cannot tell from the response alone whether a file is missing or exists. What visitors see for a broken link depends on your site's own not-found handling, not on the hosting layer.
Certificates and Domains Are a Separate Concern
Portal hosting depends on a valid certificate that covers every domain name on the record. If the certificate does not cover a domain, or is not valid for the distribution, a deployment that adds it fails rather than partially succeeding.
Hosting itself does not automate certificate checks, certificate renewals, or domain name changes. You are responsible for checking and renewing your certificate, and for adding or changing domain names when needed.
How Hosting Relates to Everything Else
Portal hosting is the foundation everything else in Portals is built on. Sites, pages, menus, assets, and site settings are all served from the distribution that hosting sets up. Requesting hosting for the first time, and asking Rhythm to rebuild your distribution after a change, are covered in How Portal Hosting Provisioning Works.