Re-directing Domain to another Domain Page via DNS Record A

October 26, 2016 7:04 AM

Greetings MeFi, I come from old-days when re-directing web-pages and domains was done via one line of code. Now I am hearing this is best done by updating (A) record within DNS. However, I want the Domain to re-direct to a page within another domain, not root-domain itself. My confusion lies with this. The domain I wish to re-direct is not going to another root domain name, but rather --- a product page on that domain. So I don't want Domain 1 to simply re-direct to Domain 2. A tech-lead told me this is how re-direction is done but I am 99.9% still sure that DNS (A) record is simply for DOMAIN to DOMAIN, versus Domain re-direct to a page within another domain. Thanks for your help and tips! Much appreciated.
posted by bostonhill to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Redirection is usually done with an HTTP status code. 301 is for a permanent move, 302 for a temporary one.

As for where you implement this, it depends on your environment. Either in your web server configuration, in a .htaccess, or in your code.

The only time I think you'd want to update DNS is if you had a new domain name you wanted to use or if you were moving to a new IP address. In the former case, you'd still want a 302 redirect to help with search engines, not losing old users etc.
posted by jonrob at 7:13 AM on October 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

You're correct about A records.

What you're describing is domain forwarding. This is typically done in the settings of your domain's registrar. For example, in Godaddy login and go to the settings page of the domain you want to forward. Look for the "Forwarding" section. There you can specify a specific page on another domain to forward visitors to.
posted by LoveHam at 7:14 AM on October 26, 2016

You could do an A record for redirecting to a sub-domain... however, if you're looking to transfer to a webpage in a sub-directory, yeah, this is exclusively going to be in the territory of domain forwarding. If you have a CPanel, it'll be under Domains, then Redirects. You'll want likely it permanent, unless you'd like the old domain indexed by search engines - then it'd be temporary.
posted by a good beginning at 2:26 PM on October 26, 2016