Hosting multiple sites on the same IP and port using IIS

Recently I came across an interesting feature which I hadn’t seen before, I used to think that in IIS you can only host one website per IP address and port. But apparently you can host multiple websites on the same IP on IIS as long as the sites have unique domain names. The key to set it up is to use the host header value when setting up a website, the host header value can be specified at the time of setting up the webiste or from the website properties from the “Web Site” tab and then clicking “Advanced” next to the IP Address and then edit the ip settings to bring up a dialog that allows you to specify the host header value.

This way you can setup two independent websites on the same IP and IIS will use the incoming request url domain to decide which website to use to serve the request.