no pop-up url forwarding?

February 26, 2007 1:43 PM

I have a domain that I would like to forward to a free wedding site. I naively registered it through Dreamhost before realizing they don't provide this service unless you also buy a hosting package. I then signed up for URL Forwarding through Doster ($5 fee), not realizing that they pop-up obnoxious ads before doing the forwarding. So now I'm looking for an alternative provider for ad-free URL Forwarding.
posted by jacobsee to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

Do you really want forwarding or do you just want your domain to point to that site? IF they have a static IP you don't really need to do hosting at all, I don't think. Just trying to see what you are doing.
posted by frieze at 1:50 PM on February 26, 2007

Best answer: if you can change the dns servers you can use zoneedit.com to do it.
posted by null terminated at 1:51 PM on February 26, 2007

Best answer: I think I understand what you want. You own foo.com and you want requests for www.foo.com to end up at www.bar.com ?

If that's right one option is ZoneEdit.com using their WebForward service. I think you'll find it's free for the way you want to use it. I have not used the WebForward part of ZoneEdit but I've used their normal DNS service for a number of years and I would recommend it.
posted by southof40 at 1:52 PM on February 26, 2007

I'm not sure I've grasped what you're asking, but here's a redirecting service that gives you a new URL to redirect users to your intended domain. It's a hilarious little Asian site that does exactly what my wife and I needed: shorten the URL provided by theKnot.com to something attractive and short enough to include on wedding invites.

The redirect site: http://just.as/
Our old wedding site: http://simple.as/kevanandkendra
posted by Milkman Dan at 1:52 PM on February 26, 2007

Response by poster: the domain I own has already gone out on the save-the-date cards so something like just.as wouldn't work, but cool idea.

i don't think i can count on a static IP for the site we want to point to though haven't looked into it.

Do you really want forwarding or do you just want your domain to point to that site?

frieze: if you could clarify this distinction for me that would be helpful.

i will look into ZoneEdit...
posted by jacobsee at 2:02 PM on February 26, 2007

Response by poster: by the way, i'm not looking for a free service, just a simple straight-forward one that won't sneak in pop-up ads.
posted by jacobsee at 2:03 PM on February 26, 2007

I use dreamhost, you could transfer it to me and I could set it to point to your domain for you.

That is, if you want a random guy on metafilter doing this for you.

Email is in my profile.
posted by davey_darling at 2:11 PM on February 26, 2007

jacobsee, I can forward too. I have a couple of servers here and there. Email and link to website is in my profile.
posted by SpecialK at 2:12 PM on February 26, 2007

What about just using a 301 Redirect with .htaccess? Dreamhost will allow you to do that and it's 'seamless' - browsers handle this automatically.
posted by unixrat at 2:24 PM on February 26, 2007

Maybe this is too simplistic, but I wanted to make sure you knew of it--it seems to me that the dead-easiest thing to do would be use an html redirect (I hope I'm not insulting your intelligence!).
posted by MrMoonPie at 2:51 PM on February 26, 2007

Response by poster: i own the domain but don't have a webpage attached to it..can i still do a redirect? where would I put it?
posted by jacobsee at 3:09 PM on February 26, 2007

DynDns.org offers free redirection with their Custom DNS Services and it's $25 a year. You can do transparent or non-transparent.
posted by phearlez at 3:20 PM on February 26, 2007

Best answer: Move the domain to NameCheap for $9. You'll get an extra year of registration, and their forwarding service doesn't have any ads. (GoDaddy's is the same, but I like NameCheap better.)
posted by kindall at 3:32 PM on February 26, 2007

i own the domain but don't have a webpage attached to it..can i still do a redirect?
yes
where would I put it?
it seems to me that the dead-easiest thing to do would be use an html redirect
Here is a web page I found that explains how to do html redirects, with code.
posted by philomathoholic at 6:29 PM on February 26, 2007

[script]
location.replace('urlyouwantittogoto');
[/script]

replace the [ and ] with < and>
Put that in a file such as index.html on your site.
posted by jaded at 6:56 AM on February 27, 2007

Response by poster: I think what a lot of people are missing is that I don't have control over the index.html on my site. I want people to type in my domain and have it redirected to one of these free wedding sites where they do all the html for you.

I set it up through ZoneEdit using their WebForward service with the "cloaked" option. (Dotster calls it masked but same thing: the entire site is wrapped in an invisible frame window so that the user's address bar doesn't change when the site is redirected. One downside of this is that you can't change the page's title from page to page within your site.)

I had to change my nameservers at Dreamhost to point to the ones at ZoneEdit instead of Dotster. Looks like the propagation to where I am at least took less than 12 hours. As a bonus, it's free for your first 5 domains at ZoneEdit!

Thanks for all the good advice, especially those who generously offered to do the URL forwarding themselves.
posted by jacobsee at 7:47 AM on February 27, 2007

Response by poster: Just tried this out with a newly registered domain on namecheap.com. I was very happy with their ad-free URL forwarding, the price was right ($8.88) and the setup was very easy. The forwarding was happening (on my ISP at least) within 10-15 minutes. thanks kindall.
posted by jacobsee at 3:29 PM on March 1, 2007