How hard is it to set up a domain redirect?
@Jackalyn (7558)
Oxford, England
January 26, 2016 10:06am CST
What I want to know is if a company selling domain names and the sort of wesite you create with a sitebuilder should find it hard to do this?
I am reasonably certain it is simple to do, but before I write my experience of the company, I wanted to check.
2 people like this
3 responses
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
26 Jan 16
I am a little unsure about what you mean by redirect. A domain will have it's own URL based on the name of the site created, but this will be displayed fine as long as the site is hosted.
The only redirect required would be the use of the email address, which should be accessible via the hosting company and present no problem. I have a domain which I host with my service provider, so it is accessible directly and the emails can be received via my service provider.
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
26 Jan 16
@Jackalyn Now I understand what you are referring to. It should be a simple matter for the hosting company of the site you wish to redirect. If the hosting company is unable to provide such a basic service then I would suggest rehosting it with someone else.
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@Jackalyn (7558)
• Oxford, England
26 Jan 16
No. You can have a site with a domain
You can also redirect a second domain to that address so people get to the site. In fact, we originally just wanted to change the address. These guys could not understand plain English and out of the blue did a failed redirect and effectively took the site off line.
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@owlwings (43897)
• Cambridge, England
26 Jan 16
It depends somewhat on who is hosting your site and who sold you (actually rents you) the domain name. Most hosting sites have instructions on how to forward/redirect your domain name so that people typing your URL are automatically taken to the actual site. If you don't want them to see the real or normal URL of the site, you need to look up how to mask the URL.
Usually URL forwarding/redirecting and masking is controlled from the nameservers of the company 'selling' you the domain name. If you bought the name from GoDaddy, their instructions are in the link below. If you bought from someone else, the basic principle is the same though the details may vary.
Domain name forwarding lets you automatically direct your domain name's visitors to a different website. Masking prevents visitors from seeing your domain name forwarding by keeping your domain name in the Web browser's address bar.
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@owlwings (43897)
• Cambridge, England
26 Jan 16
@Jackalyn I haven't any experience with Sitebuilder though I have looked at it briefly in the past. I tend not to trust people who say "Free Domain with Every Plan". This usually means that you don't actually own the domain (it's registered for you under their name) and therefore it's generally impossible to move your site to another host when you outgrow your Sitebuilder site.
The instructions in their FAQs section ("How do I assign a domain to a website?") appear to say that it is very straightforward to assign another domain name that you own - presumably have bought from them - to the site you've created. From your experience, however, it seems that their system is not working as well as it should!
Actually, there is usually some delay when you redirect a URL. This is due to the updates which are necessary to all of the DNS servers all over the world. GoDaddy state that it's usually about 30 minutes but I have sometimes found that it takes longer.
FYI, a DNS server is a database system that links your human-readable URL with the actual IP address of the website. There are thousands of these servers all over the world and all of them are connected so that, when there are changes to where a URL directs to, the changes are daisy-chained all round the globe so that each server can find the correct website for the URL when a browser asks for it.
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@Jackalyn (7558)
• Oxford, England
26 Jan 16
@owlwings Quite. Their FAQs say it. They seem unable to cope if you buy two domains from them and need to change one for the othetr. It is simple if you bought it elsewhere. We actually bought the professional plan. I know it is easy. I used another similar site for years and never had a problem. We did not want a free domain and that is why we bought .com. They had the site up and running so it was correct before. Why it suddenly changed we have no idea.
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