Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Multiple sites, one AOLServer, and one database?

Not quite... the host-node map maps something like

www.my-domain.com

to a subsite (or URL) such as

/my-domain... i.e. it maps to www.real-domain.com/my-domain

Therefore you can have different URLs point to the same AOLServer instance, but when request hit the site, the host-node map directs them to the appropriate subsite based on the URL they requested.

so, you could have three subsites mounted as

msite.com/
    /sub-1
    /sub-2
    /sub-3

with sub-one.com mapping to sub-1
sub-two.com mapping to sub-2
and
sub-three mapping to sub-3

then if someone went to www.sub-two.com they'd actually end up at your subsite i.e. /sub-1

Cheers
Simon