I own a domain named mysite.com hosted on a VPS with a spesific IP.

When you type the domain in the web browser, my website loads up.

However, typing the IP address brings up the Nginx welcome page instead.

I have a question:

What is the proper way to create a page that can be accessed using the IP address? I want to ensure it is optimized for SEO and safe.

Currently, one idea is to redirect to the main site or maybe to a 403 error page from phpmyadmin?

If I implement a redirect, will it impact the site's visibility in search engines?

Thanks, everyone!

When someone types the IP address into their browser, the server does not know to serve your website, hence it displays the default Nginx welcome page. This is because Nginx only serves your site for requests that come to "mysite.com".

To make a specific page accessible via the IP address, you have a couple of options. One method is to create a configuration in Nginx that serves a custom page or redirects IP requests to your main site. Here's how you could do that:

1. Create a Custom Page: You could create an HTML page, say "index.html", and place it in a specific directory (like /var/www/html/your_custom_page). Then, modify your Nginx configuration to point the server block for the default server (the one that handles requests that don't match your domain) to this page. This way, when someone accesses the IP, they will see whatever content you decide to serve there.

2. Setting Up Redirects: Alternatively, if you want to redirect users who access your IP address to "mysite.com", you could add a redirect in your Nginx configuration:

   server {
       listen 80;
       server_name <your_ip_address>;

       return 301 http://mysite.com$request_uri;
   }

  This will send any requests made to your IP to your domain with a 301 redirect.

Now to your question about SEO and visibility, if you implement a 301 redirect from the IP address to your domain, search engines will typically consider this a permanent redirect. However, these IP address requests should be rare, and they won't have much impact on your site's overall visibility because search engines generally index only canonical URLs — which is your domain name in this case.

The concern with a 403 error page is that it doesn't provide any useful content or context for users. A simple "Access Denied" page could confuse visitors who may mistakenly enter your IP instead of the domain. Providing a helpful message or redirecting them ensures a more user-friendly experience.

Lastly, remember to test any changes you make in a staging environment before pushing them to production, to ensure you don't accidentally affect your live site. Always backup your configs before making significant changes.

You should include anadditional virtual host at the beginning of the nginx configuration that will respond with a status of 444.

server {
listen xхx.xхx.xхx.xхx:80 default_srevior;
access_log disabled;
server_name anyone;
return 444;
}

This applies to FreeBSD, while on Linux there is a differend setup."

Make sure to keep your configurations clean to avoid any issues later.

I often place placeholders in my projects.

******************** PLACEHOLDERS ********************

<VirtualHost xx.xx.xx.164>

RootDocument "/usr/local/www/apache22/data"

NameServer xx.xx.xx.164

</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost xx.xx.xx.182>

RootDocument "/usr/local/www/apache22/data"

NameServer xx.xx.xx.182

</VirtualHost>

It's important to make sure these entries are positioned at the top of the Apache configuration file, meaning they should come before any other domain setups. This way, it ensures that the server processes these virtual hosts first, allowing for smoother routing and management of requests. This can be crucial for testing or development purposes when you need to isolate specific environments.