More secure public blog pages

Question

I have got Snow Leopard Server up and hosting several simple public sites without problems. One of my sites has a blog for public view.
Previously, this site was hosted elsewhere and the blog ran on MovableType. In MT, Blogger, etc. the url for the public page of the blog is different from the url which is used to edit the blog. Thus, the edit/administration log in page can be configured to use SSL or locked down to reduce attempts at hacking the site, while the public views are simple http. Now that it is migrating to SLS 10.6.4, the public blog page has the log in linking to editing/posting functions.
There are actually two questions. Is there a way to make this more secure? And, is there an easy way to map the blog to another url such as "blog.mysite.net" ? I have played around with creating a duplicate blog page located in the web root where appropriate <div>'s and parts of the native blog page "www.mysite.net/users/username" are copied and certain links are removed. It's a bit flaky. For example, it you protect the blog using a realm to prevent access then include a <div> from the blog page on a page outside the realm, it may not display. It also takes away log in for posting comments.
How have you solved similar issues?

Answer 1

The simple idea is to clean up URLs. I wanted to get a variety of simple URLs to point to my blog. For example, "www.yoursite.url/blog" and "blog.yoursite.url" would all call up "www.yoursite.url/users/blogger/weblog" in the browser.
In this set of instructions, there is only one blog on the site created by the user "blogger":
The first (getting "www.yoursite.url/blog" to call "www.yoursite.url/users/blogger/weblog") is simple. In Server Admin -> Sites -> yoursite.net (or whatever) under the Aliases tab, click the "+" under "URL Aliases and Redirects" and create a new Redirect where the pattern is "/blog" and the path is "http://www.yoursite.url/users/blogger/weblog" and click OK. Now Save and restart the Web service.
The other was a bit more challenging but mod_rewrite comes to the rescue.
First, you need to set up the DNS servers.
1. Log in to the DNS control panel of your registrar, ISP, or DNS provider (everydns, dyndns, etc.) and add an A record for blog.mysite.net pointing to the public IP address of your firewall/etc. on which your Snow Leopard Server answers http requests.
2. In Server Admin, under DNS -> Primary zone -> Add New Record -> Alias which is "blog.yoursite.url" pointing to the IP address or name of your SLS.
Next, you create a web server alias and then rewrite http request coming in to that alias. The steps are:
1. Stop Web service in Server Admin.
2. In Server Admin -> Settings -> Modules, make sure rewrite_module is checked.
3. In Server Admin -> Web -> Sites, select your "www.yoursite.url" which hosts the blog and under the Aliases tab, click the "+" under the Web Server Aliases field and create the alias "blog.yoursite.url"
4. Now, in Server Admin -> Web -> Sites, select your "www.yoursite.url" which hosts the blog and under the Options tab, enable "Allow All Overrides" and save.
5. Next is a bit of rewrite configuration. You need to rewrite http request for "blog.yoursite.url" to "www.yoursite.url/users/blogger." Fire up your terminal and "sudo nano -w /etc/apache2/sites/0005your.ip.add.ress_portwww.yoursite.url.conf, find the <Directory> section which looks like this:
<Directory "/Library/WebServer/Sites/yoursite.url">
<IfModule mod_dav.c>
DAV Off
</IfModule>
Options All -Includes -ExecCGI -Indexes +MultiViews
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
Edit this to:
<Directory "/Library/WebServer/Sites/yoursite.url">
<IfModule mod_dav.c>
DAV Off
</IfModule>
Options All -Includes -ExecCGI -Indexes +MultiViews +FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^blog\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.yoursite.url/users/blogger/weblog [R,NC,L]
</IfModule>
</Directory>
Even though mod_rewrite.c is loaded, rewriting will not occur unless the directives "Options +FollowSymlinks" and "RewriteEngine on" are in the conf file or .htaccess file. The first RewriteCond tells the rewrite engine not to attempt rewriting HTTP_HOST requests which start with www. The second RewriteCond checks if the HTTP_POST field begins with "blog." The RewriteRule takes the requested url and rewrites it. Although the url description "^(.*)" matches all urls, we know any http request must be for "www.yoursite.url" or "blog.yoursite.url" because those are the only addresses to which this particular virtual host responds. We excluded "www" so ....]
6. Now restart the Web service and check it out.