Summary: I have two questions: how can you redirect a domain you’ve registered to a particular URL, and where do you get the DNS entries they ask for when you register a domain?
Overview: I have a couple of sites on AOL. They’ve been there for years and I’ve worked hard to get them well listed on the search engines, so I’d like to keep them. Nonetheless, I’d like to register a domain name and have it point to one of my sites.
I’d like to register “beyondjw.com” and, when somebody goes there, have them redirected to the other URL (preferably in a transparent way). I don’t know how to do that.
Moreover, every time I look into registering a domain, I’m asked to provide two DNS entries. How do you go about getting those? I know what they are, but … do you pay somebody to use their service for a DNS? If so, who, and how much do they typically charge?
For the redirect, I know of an HTML way. That is, to upload a page to your site with nothing on it, but one line of code:
<html>
<head>
<title> </title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" id=all>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=the url you want your visitors to be directed to">
</body>
</html>
I’m sure there is a server side way to do this. Hopefully, someone will chime in and bring it up.
As for the DNS entries, these come from your host. A host is required to “host” your site. That is, to store your site on their server. That server has 2 DNS entries (sometimes 4), and the host will tell you what those DNS entries are.
As for your search engine listings, there really isn’t anything you can do there, but resubmit your new URL to the search engines, or do the redirect thing.
The name itself can be “parked” without actually having a host for it. It’s been awhile since I’ve been through the InterNIC (or networksolutions, whatever its called now) registration, but I believe one of the options during the registration is to park the domain name for a nominal fee.
Then go ahead and register it now, and handle hosting later. However…
You should realize that getting a domain name to point to a site requires the server to be configured to accept traffic to it. In other words, if you register http://www.mysite.com and want to point it to your AOL site, AOL needs to have a redirect entry on their servers that will point traffic from that domain name to your particular site.
When you specify DNS entries, you are pointing to an entire server or cluster address, and it’s up to the server to know where it should go.
It would be worth the effort to even see if AOL will do this, because I suspect that they won’t (my ISP will not unless I pay for the site).
Also, dunno where you plan on registering your domain, but there are a lot of cheaper solutions then registering through InterNIC. I have a number of domains registered at http://www.totalnic.net.
Handy is correct, in that URL forwarding is one way to solve your problem. In fact, I did some quick browsing, and hit upon this segment from a FAQ about a company that provides URL forwarding services:
The reason that ISP’s and other ‘free’ web hosting companies don’t like to allow your own domain name is because they need to update their servers with your domain entry in order to make it work. AOL has a lot of customers, and maintaining that many redirects would be costly if they allowed all of their customers this service. Hence, some companies will, for a price, allow you to point your domain to their servers, and they will then forward the URL to whatever URL you specify.
Free DNS is good if you are running your own web server or can get hosting that will allow your own domain name, but in this case is not going to help a whole lot.
I do this sort of stuff on a commercial (as opposed to personal) level, so I don’t really know of any free services that will provide URL forwarding.
There’s another way to do a client-side redirect as well, which would be usefull if the site URL actually changed.
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<SCRIPT language=“JavaScript1.1”>
<!–
location.replace(“http://www.new.site/page.html”);
//–>
</SCRIPT>
<NOSCRIPT>
<META http-equiv=“Refresh” content=“0; URL=http://www.new.site/page.html”>
</NOSCRIPT>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
This page has moved to a <A href=“http://www.new.site/page.html”>new location</A>.
</BODY>
</HTML>
I used this when I moved my site from my personal space from my ISP to an actual domain name. It’s totally transparent to the user, if their browser supports javascript, and even removes itself from bwoser history (to get past that annoying BACK button endless loop). I got it from C|Net’s builder site.
Granted, this doesn’t answer the orignal question, but somebody brought it up.
Go on & try what I suggested, register.com when i went there before, you could get a name registered for $35.00 for year that includes URL forwarding to your site.