Domain Redirects using “forward slash”
March 2nd, 2009 by Duncan
How to set-up Domain Name Redirects to “forward slash” addresses.
For example: www.yourdomain.com/newredirect
Firstly why would you want to do set this up?
If you have a multiple page website, then there is no need to set-up redirects, assuming your website is structured correctly, then you will already have additional pages that already have a specific address, for example Product specific page, or Contact Us, or Location pages.
However perhaps you are using your domain with a network or affiliate marketing campaign, in which case you may want a short punchy domain name to use on your advertising material that will direct people to your affiliate pages.
Here’s an example of this in practice. I use domain
www.utilities-dc.com to direct protential residential customers to my affilaited Utility Sales site: http://www.uwdcvideos.co.uk/index.taf?exref=627824&v=1
but I also use www.utilities-dc.com/business to direct business customers to business specific sales pages: http://www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk/business/index.taf?exref=627824
Another reason is perhaps for Team support. You can purchase one domain name and use it for each team member to redirect to their own affiliated pages. For example the team building side to our network business has it’s own affiliated link. So I use domain www.join-our-team.co.uk and then use /intials for each team member to use if they so wish and this saves them to cost of an additional domain name purchase.
Notice in this example the top level domain www.join-our-team.co.uk has a single web-page explaining to the reader that the “website name is missing an identifier”. This is so that his domain is safe for team members to use without fear of their contacts, just dropping the “forward slash” bit and losing the prospect to an upline distributor.
So enough example of why you may want to use a domain redirect, and onto the:
How to set-up domain redirect (using Bluehost)
- Either Purchase the domain name to be used for redirection directly with Bluehost, or alternatively use your regular domain provider and then set the “Nameserver” records to direct the domain to Bluehost (ns1.bluehost.com & ns2.bluehost.com)
- Login to your Bluehost account cPanel
- Select “Addon Domain” from the Domain Section
- Type the Domain name (excluding www.) in the box for Step1. Domain:
Bluehost will
then automatically verify the domain is available to Bluehost and if
you so will get the following message in the step 2 response section:“Ownership verified. The nameservers for the domain “your-domain-name” are currently set to NS1.BLUEHOST.COM, NS2.BLUEHOST.COM.”
In the Step 3 section, select ADDON DOMAIN
In the Step 4 section, either accept the filename for the subfolder
of this domain on your account, or change this to a different name if
you prefer. (personally I keep them the same as the domain name so that
I can easily see which folder relates to which website)Now just Click the ADD DOMAIN button, and wait for Bluehost to finish the set-up (this can take a minute or two)
- Back to cPanel Domain section, and now click on “Redirect Domain”
- Select the Domain to use from the Dropdown selection (the domain will only be vailable here if you have followed the above steps to create the Addon Domain.
- Enter the “/name” to use.
- Enter the redirection address.
- Click the Add Button.
- JOB DONE
This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Bluehost Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.