What is a Zone?

A zone in smoxy is a reusable configuration that applies to one or more hostnames. Instead of configuring each hostname individually, you attach hostnames to a zone so they all share the same settings for proxy and origin, caching, security, optimization, and routing. For how these settings act on each request — and in which order — see the Request Lifecycle.

The zones overview lists every proxy zone in your organization.

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How Zones Work

1. Create a zone with your desired settings (caching, security, image optimization, etc.)
2. Attach hostnames to the zone -- point each hostname's DNS CNAME at smoxy, and incoming requests are handled with the zone's configuration
3. Manage centrally -- changes to the zone apply to every hostname attached to it

For example, you could attach www.example.com, shop.example.com, and blog.example.com to the same zone. All three hostnames would share identical caching, security, and optimization settings.

The Create Zone dialog: a zone name and an environment tag.

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What You Can Configure

A zone controls every aspect of how smoxy handles traffic for its attached hostnames:

Feature	What It Does	Learn More
Proxy / Origin	Where smoxy sends traffic -- a single server or a pool of servers -- plus custom headers and log forwarding	Proxy
Caching	How long content is cached, cache key composition, cache tags, stale cache behavior, dynamic (HTML) caching	Cache
Optimization	Automatic image compression, WebP/AVIF conversion, quality settings per format	Optimization
Security & WAF	Web Application Firewall, managed security scenarios, access rules, Basic Auth, Under Attack Mode	Security & WAF
Custom Pages	Branded error, security, and maintenance pages	Custom Pages
Rules	Override any zone setting based on request conditions (URL, country, headers, etc.)	Rules Overview

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Common Patterns

One Zone Per Environment

Create separate zones for production, staging, and development. Each environment gets its own caching, security, and optimization settings -- and you can tag each zone accordingly.

Zone	Hostnames	Settings
Production	www.example.com, shop.example.com	Aggressive caching, WAF enabled, image optimization on
Staging	staging.example.com	Short cache TTL, WAF enabled, debug headers on
Development	dev.example.com	No caching, WAF off, debug headers on

One Zone for Multiple Hostnames

If several hostnames serve the same type of content with the same requirements, attach them all to one zone. This avoids duplicating configuration.

Moving Hostnames Between Zones

You can move a hostname to a different zone at any time. The hostname immediately inherits the new zone's settings -- no need to reconfigure anything manually.

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Zones and Redirects

When you only need to forward one hostname to another instead of serving and optimizing content, use a redirect rather than a zone.

Type	Purpose
Zone	Full configuration -- caching, security, optimization, routing, rules
Redirect	Only forwards traffic from a source hostname to another -- no caching, no optimization

Redirects are managed at the organization level. Use one when you only need to forward a hostname (e.g., redirecting example.com to www.example.com). See Redirects for details.