How to setup a Reverse proxy with Sitecore?

Question

Is there a way that for certain URLs (like /blog/*) to load the content from other server, i.e implementing a reverse proxy?

We were able to do this with a normal site (non Sitecore) but when Sitecore is present it seems that the URL rules from our web.config or http://www.helicontech.com/isapi_rewrite/ are ignored and the rules from Sitecore take precedence and when accessing the URL instead of getting the content from the other site (i.e. reverse proxy working) we get the Sitecore 404 page.

Is there a way to do this with Sitecore? Maybe set thing up in a way that for certain URL patterns Sitecore is bypassed and the web.config and/or Helicon module rules are executed instead (which have support for reverse proxy)?

Answer 1

We faced the same issue about a month ago. You can use the following rewrite rule.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule name="Blog rewrite" enabled="true" >
          <match url="^blog/(.*)$" />
          <action type="Rewrite" url="http://your.other.domain/{R:0}" />
        </rule>
      </rules>
    </rewrite>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

We also had to ignore the route for the blog because of MVC route resolving.

using System.Web.Routing;
using Sitecore.Mvc.Pipelines.Loader;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;


namespace MyProject
{
    public class RegisterRoutes : InitializeRoutes
    {
        public override void Process(PipelineArgs args)
        {
            RouteTable.Routes.Ignore("blog/{*pathInfo}");
        }
    }
}

Related config:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <pipelines>
      <initialize>
        <processor type="MyProject.RegisterRoutes, MyProject" patch:before="processor[@type='Sitecore.Mvc.Pipelines.Loader.InitializeRoutes, Sitecore.Mvc']" />
      </initialize>
    </pipelines>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>