Sometimes the smallest things confuse me. If you have a few extra domain names that you want to point to your main hosting site, is it better to create add-on domains or to redirect the URL? I am unclear on all the differences between the two.

And in either case, when the visitor ends up on your main site, is the URL in the address bar your main domain name or that of the add-on/redirect name?

Vito

Hello Vito. :)

By the way, I love your software ;).

In answer to your questions.. Firstly, I think what you are talking about is domain parking. Before I explain the difference between a parked domain and a redirect, i'll explain the difference between an add-on and a redirec URL.

addon domain: Consilidate other domains on your account to function as a seperate working domain on top of your main account. You can find more details here (http://faq.ecphosting.net/multiple.htm).

domain parking: add a domain on top of another domain, which in turn effectively points all HTTP and email traffic from the parked domain to the domain it is parked on top of.

To crunch it down, domain parking is what you are reffering to (it's ok, I even get it confused) :D

SO, If you really break down the process here (and we'll suppose you are talking about Apache), you'll find both domain parking and redirects are equally speedy. But if you broke it down further, the parked domain comes out on top as far as speed and features... however, a domain redirect has it's plusses as well. I'll try to explain.

Suppose our main domain in our illustration is timber.com. And you were considering timber.net as either an parked domain or a redirect script.

Let's imagine our redirect script. To create this, we would need timber.net as an addon domain or have an account of its own, because we would need to obvioulsy place the redirect file within it. This simply involves a simple .htaccess file in the main folder of our timber.net 'www' folder that points timber.net to timber.com.

If we were to park timber.net, all HTTP and email traffic will successfully go to timber.com. However, another perk comes into play... Each time someone types in timber.net/something, the parked domain will FORWARD this request to timber.com/something.


However Vito... you bring up a good point.... what is displayed in the URL form between the two AFTER the script points you to the final desitination? There is a difference. However, regardless of which above option you choose, whenever you click on a link (of course, after the redirect or parked forward) you see the REAL URL in the above bar.

Here are some examples

Parked Domain
If i type in simply timber.net (with no trail), it forwards to timber.com, but LEAVES timber.net in the address bar. HOWEVER, if you type in a trial, such as timber.net/something it will forward to timber.com/something and WILL have the .COM (final) in the URL immedietly.

Redirect Script
If you type in timber.net it immedietly forwards to timber.com AND shows timber.com in the final URL. But you cannot forward all trails like a parked domain can. However, it does show the final URL in the box after the forward. For an example, type in ecphosting.com in your browser. It forwards to ecphosting.net (with the changed URL in the browser). This is working as a redirect, only because we want to display the corrected URL immedietly.

As far as speed, the parked domain works faster (but only in milliseconds) because it doesnt pass to one domain and jump to another, but forwards RIGHT to the domain its forwarding to (from the http.conf file).

Vito, I hope this helps. I may copy all of this and use it as a FAQ, haha, and try to make it less complicated.

Wow, Erik. That was unequivocally the best and most thorough reply I have ever received at WHT! I think you've missed your calling. Ever consider becoming a teacher?

Thanks for taking such effort to provide a detailed reply. :beer:

Vito

OK, a little confusion still. I will give you a real life example. Aside from demodemo.com I also have demodemo.net. So I tried creating an add-on domain (demodemonet) to test it all out. In cPanel, everything went OK. It said I successfully created an add-on domain. I then FTPed up to my site and saw that there was in fact a new directory demodemonet created in my public_html directory. So I uploaded an index.html file into the new directory to see if I can point to it. BTW, DNS for demodemo.net is fully propogated to the same nameservers as demodemo.com.

So my results. Pointing to:

http://www.demodemo.com/demodemonet - success
http://www.demodemo.net - failed
http://demodemonet.demodemo.com - failed

I'm confused as to why the last two don't work

Vito

Vito, this is a common problem with hosts. Your host will need to put a little sunshine on the named.conf file (as this usually cures this). What I mean by sunshine, is that your hsot will need to clean it up a bit (as if it becomes bulky, it can messup subdomains, etc..). Also the httpd.conf file could be misbehaving... but be assured, you did everything you can do... all you need to do is mention this to your host. This is not a bad thing, just a little something that your host can resolve for you. :D

Great. Thanks for your help. :)

Vito

Originally posted by vito
OK, a little confusion still. I will give you a real life example. Aside from demodemo.com I also have demodemo.net. So I tried creating an add-on domain (demodemonet) to test it all out. In cPanel, everything went OK. It said I successfully created an add-on domain. I then FTPed up to my site and saw that there was in fact a new directory demodemonet created in my public_html directory. So I uploaded an index.html file into the new directory to see if I can point to it. BTW, DNS for demodemo.net is fully propogated to the same nameservers as demodemo.com.

So my results. Pointing to:

http://www.demodemo.com/demodemonet - success
http://www.demodemo.net - failed
http://demodemonet.demodemo.com - failed

I'm confused as to why the last two don't work

Vito All of those URLs say "Sorry, no list for you"

Originally posted by iamdave
All of those URLs say "Sorry, no list for you"
Yes, that's because I've got a great host who always takes good care of me. He's already taken care of the problem. :)

Vito

Vito,

I wen't to your site to make a purchase, do you think you will be back online later today?

I get the following 509 error when going to demodemo.com

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

Holy crap. How is that happening?????

I have my site having 10 GB of bw available. When I look at my WHM, I'm only using less than 3 GB so far this month!

HOW DO I FIX THIS??

Vito

That's very odd. Even though I allotted 10 GB bw to my site in WHM, it still produced the 509 error even though my usage was <3 GB. So I manually increased the bw to 20 GB and the site is back online. Although I'm relieved I was able to get it back online, WHY did it go offline??

EasySite, thanks very much for the heads up. Feel free to visit the site now, all is running fine now.

Vito