Url masking for a forwarded domain name

[Josh]

Let's say I register a domain name like www.mydomain.com

I have an old site www.oldsite.com

I want to forward www.mydomain.com to www.oldsite.com

I don't want visitors see the name www.oldsite.com so I have to use some kind of masking.

One of my friends registered a domain at godaddy.com and they offer free masking. It works well, but there is one problem; godadday adds an invisible frame to make this masking possible.

I'm not so happy with this, because now every page will read www.mydomain.com only, so it will be impossible to bookmark specific pages (one of the biggest shortcomings of frames)

Now what should I do? Can I still use godaddy.com and use some kind of trick or should I go for a different registrar?

Has anyone experience with domain forwarding and masking urls?

It's important for me that only the domain name should be masked; not the complete url!

Thanks for your help

 

[Josh]

I found this article on the internet:

"Web Re-direction (forwarding)
This option is for people who want to use a domain name with their existing free web space. Compared to standard web hosting, this is generally quite slow and subsidised by adverts. We would not recommend this for business use. There will also be problems with search engine submissions as redirection is now banned by some search engines.

We would recommend that web redirection is only used as a temporary solution to hosting. If you want your site to work correctly for your clients and search engines, you should always use proper hosting."

This guy ends with saying that "you should use proper hosting".

What does he mean by that, I mean what is "proper" hosting?

Question for Mark; how did you solve this with photoshopgurus.info?

I can imagine that your site is hosted at A and that you have your hostname registered at B. But still your site has proper redirecting (or forwarding if we want to call it like that).

Note: I'm planning to use the services of a professional web host that offers all the options I need (SQL, PHP, CGI, etc) and NOT my ISP.

 

[Alistair]

I found this article on the internet:

"Web Re-direction (forwarding)
This option is for people who want to use a domain name with their existing free web space. Compared to standard web hosting, this is generally quite slow and subsidised by adverts. We would not recommend this for business use. There will also be problems with search engine submissions as redirection is now banned by some search engines.

We would recommend that web redirection is only used as a temporary solution to hosting. If you want your site to work correctly for your clients and search engines, you should always use proper hosting."

This guy ends with saying that "you should use proper hosting".

What does he mean by that, I mean what is "proper" hosting?

Question for Mark; how did you solve this with photoshopgurus.info?

I can imagine that your site is hosted at A and that you have your hostname registered at B. But still your site has proper redirecting (or forwarding if we want to call it like that).

Note: I'm planning to use the services of a professional web host that offers all the options I need (SQL, PHP, CGI, etc) and NOT my ISP.

Josh.. my best guess is that the best person to ask suggestions about this subject is from mark (the-keeper). He might be of help.. I am not sure though

 

[theKeeper]

Actually, i'm sure there are a few folks here that can answer this as well or better than i. ;\

I'd have to agree about using "proper" hosting services. Anything else and you're simply asking for problems, and limitations. You get what you pay for, as the saying goes.

When you register your domain name with a compny, one of the options you can ask for is a redirection service. This is not like the kind you described though Josh. This is done "at the source", so it's fully legit and produces the proper registration of your full url in the user's browser. This can usually be added for a small price.

I have just recently re-registered my .info name and my new .com version with a buddy of mine in Ireland; who gave it to me for a song pretty much. Now my urk is "photoshopgurus.com". But i have my .info url still also. I'm phasing it out over the next year.

There is nothing special to be done Josh to have your url be reached by surfers. Yes, my site sits on a server at point A, and the company i'm registered through is at point B. But my registration company has control over where people get sent when their browser requests my url. So it's not so much a "redirection" as it is a simple direction.

To find companies through which to register a domain name, do a search for that subject: "domain name registration". A few better known ones are "Verisign" and "Network Solutions". But look around and try to get the best price you can. Be sure to read the fine print though. Ask here if you're in doubt. We'll help you out.

Hope that helps. :B

 

[Josh]

Thanks for the reply Mark.

I did some research in the meantime and slowly the pieces come together.
The redirection service that you're talking about is probably what people refer to as 'DNS' services and that indeed turn out to be the right solution.
Both the hosting company and registrar that I'm interesting in offer this kind of service. It seems that this hosting company A will provide me with the DNS information that I can use for my registered Domain at B.
It turns out that the forwarding options I was talking about earlier are only useful for people who host their sites on hosts that don't offer these DNS services; my own ISP for example, but also free hosts like Geocities.

Three sites have been very useful;

http://www.webhostingchoice.com (to find the best hosts)
http://www.100best-domain-name-registration.com/ (to find a good registrar)
https://internethosting.com/cgi-bin/internethosting/Domaingate.cgi?htmlpage=naminator.html (a more advanced way to find a domain name)

At the moment I?ve found a registrar and web host that both offer quality, reliability and service for a descent price. The domain name is costing me only $7.95 at a registrar that is recommended by several people/sites. Both companies have been in the business for quite some years.
The web host offers Unix hosting for $50 US a year, which doesn?t sound too expensive to me.
Included is;

Total Web Space 150 MB
Bandwidth Transfer 5000 MB
# of POP Email accounts Unlimited
# of Autoresponders Unlimited
# of Mailing Lists Unlimited
# of Sub Domains Unlimited
# of MySQL databases Unlimited
24/7 Support Included
99.5% Uptime Guarantee (5% of your monthly fee in return for every 30 min down time)
30-day Money Back Guarantee
cPanel 8 Control Panel Included
Web-based Email Included
Unlimited Pop E-mail accounts
Catch-all e-mail
Pop mail SPAM filters
FTP Access
Anonymous FTP Accounts
MySQL Databases Unlimited
CGI-BIN
Perl Modules Over 1100 Installed
Real Audio (not streaming) .ram files supported
Free Pre-installed CGI Scripts 13
PHP Support
Server Sides Includes (SSI)
Account and Site Log Files
Webalizer Site Statistics
Email Autoresponders Unlimited
Email Forwarding Unlimited
Frontpage 2002 Extensions
APACHE Handlers
Cron Jobs
e-Commerce Features:
Shared SSL Server $5/month
SSL Certificates & Secure Server $199.95/year + install fee
Password Protection for Directories
Agora E-commerce Shopping Cart
Redhat Interchange Shopping Cart
Daily Backups 1-Click Backups
MIME Types (Full Support) Enabled

The service seems to be great too. I contacted their sales AND support department by mail and in both cases they replied in a professional way in less than 5 min.

I think I?ll go for it, but like you said? first spending some extra time on reading the fine print.

Thanks Mark

 

[Erik]

No intention to influence at all as your provider looks very interesting!
I am hosted at anfyhost (from the applets), and these are their options/conditions:

HOSTING PACKAGES:

1/ SPECIAL

Disk Space 15 MB
Bandwidth 250 MB
POP3 Accounts 1
FTP Accounts 1
Shell Access No
Control Panel cPanel8
MySQL Datab No
Annual Paym. $1.49/mo.

2/ STANDARD

Disk Space 75 MB
Bandwidth 1024 MB
POP3 Accounts 15
FTP Accounts 1
Shell Access Yes
Control Panel cPanel8
MySQL Datab 1
Monhtly Paym. $4.95
Annual Paym. $4.45/mo.

3/ MULTIMEDIA PROFESSIONAL

Disk Space 150 MB
Bandwidth 2048 MB
POP3 Accounts 30
FTP Accounts 1
Shell Access Yes
Control Panel cPanel8
MySQL Datab 3
Monhtly Paym. $8.95
Annual Paym.$8.10/mo.

PROFESSIONAL

Disk Space 300 MB
Bandwidth 3072 MB
POP3 Accounts 100
FTP Accounts 5
Shell Access Yes
Control Panel cPanel8
MySQL Datab 5
Monhtly Paym. $19.95
Annual Paym. $17.45/mo.


All of our plans will come with the following standard features:

Access/Control
24/7 FTP
Unlimited FTP accounts
File Manager
FTP Manager
phpMyAdmin
SSH Access
cPanel8 WebBased Control Panel
Extra Features
Custom Error Pages
Error Log
Search Engine Submit
Raw Access Logs
Raw Log Manager
Subdomain Stats
Redirects
Web/FTP Stats (Awstats, Webalizer, Latest Visitors)
Password Protected Directories
Backup/Restore Feature
IP Deny Manager
Domain Lookup
Trace Route
MX Record Modification
HotLink Protection
Front Page Extensions
CGI Scripting Support
PHP 4.3.3
mySQL 4.0.15
Apache Handlers
Perl Modules
MIME Types
Cron Jobs
24/7 Support
99% Uptime Guarantee
30-Day Money Back Guarantee
Server/Data Center
Redundant 10mbps-1000mbps Connections
Multiple Backbone Providers
Redundant Power Backups
AMD + P4 Processors
512MB - 2GB RAM
Premium Bandwidth
All NOC Standards
24/7 Tech On Site
24/7 External Monitoring
RedHat Linux 9.0
Email

SMTP Server

POP3/IMAP Email Accounts

Web Based Email (Horde, Squirrel, Neo)

Spam Filters

Auto Responders

Forwarders

Mailing Lists
Pre-Installed / Auto-Install Scripts
Portals/CMS:
PHP-Nuke (visit site)
Post-Nuke (visit site)
phpWebSite (visit site)
xoops (visit site)

Blogs:
b2 (visit site)
pMachine Free (visit site)
Discussion Boards:
phpBB2 (visit site)
Invision Board (visit site)

Customer Relationship:
CS Live Help (visit site)
PHP Support Tickets (visit site)
Support Services Manager (visit site)

Shopping Carts:
OS Commerce (visit site)
Agora (visit site)
Interchange (visit site)

Other Scripts:
4images Gallery (visit site)
PHPauction (visit site)
PHProjekt (visit site)
phpLinks (visit site)
Moodle (visit site)
Noah?s Classifieds (visit site)
PHPlist (visit site)
WebCalendar (visit site)

Add-On's
Extra Bandwidth: $3.00/GB/mo
Extra Storage: $3.00/50MB/mo
Unique IP: $2.00/month
Domain Registration - $12.45/yr

 

[Josh]

Thanks Erik, I will have a look at that too

It's always good to compare several hosting companies.

 

[Erik]

Imo, the one you found looks very interesting indeed as you get more for less money.
Yet, for a personal site, you need loads of images to fill 75MB. Otoh: when you upload animations and other large files, your download limit can be reaches more quickly that you though, most certainly when you make popular movies...

I chose Anfy because I know Fabio and always liked his Java applets. But I must admit that I don't have a clue about more than two-thirds of the options that are offered here.
I should find the time to examine all options one day...