Advice: Don't want redirect, but want to mask real URL

Noob alert!

[nigassma]

Hi All,

This DNS stuff is out of my realm of expertise so any help would be appreciated. I'm not sure what it is called, so I wasn't sure what to search for in the forum. I think this is a re-write, but hey what do I know? Not much.

Anyway, here's what I want to do and I think there are a few ways to skin the problem:

I have a subdomain:

clientx.mydomain.com

Then there is a site where the clientx content lives (temporarily):

www.otherdomain.com/mydomain/clientx

My goal is to get it so that when Client-X goes to clientx.mydomain.com the URL they see in their address bar in their browser remains clientx.mydomain.com but the content all lives at www.otherdomain.com/mydomain/clientx.

I think redirects actually change the URL and takes the user to the redirected site... correct?

From the people I've asked about it so far I've heard my options include:

cname, using mod_rewrite, using frame forwarding, using an iFrames, etc.

[jdMorgan]

If otherdomain is an IP-based server (that is, it has a unique IP address), then you can point the mydomain DNS to it, and use mod_rewrite to internally rewrite requests for mydomain into an area of your filespace reserved for that client at "otherdomain.com/mydomain/clientx"

Alternately, you can set up mydomain as an "add-on" domain to otherdomain in some control panels (This is almost the same thing as the above, but the control panel does the server config for you -- if somewhat sloppily).

Or use mod_proxy, being careful to set up X-Forwarded-For on the mydomain server and custom logging on the otherdomain server.

All of the above requires a certain minimum level of hosting features or server config access. If you're not able to implement any of these ideas, consider whether you've hit the limit for your current 'class' of hosting, and whether it might be a good idea to upgrade to an account type that can support hosting client sites -- temporarily or permanently.

Jim

[nigassma]

Thanks for the feedback Jim. otherdomain.com is a 3rd party vendor that does coding quickly and cheaply. Gives me time to take on more projects and larger ones being a single designer/developer. So I actually have no domain access on otherdomain.

all i have access to is mydomain.com

[jdMorgan]

Then your only choice seems to be to set up a reverse proxy on your server. If you have server admin privileges, see the Apache tutorials on reverse proxying.

The stats/analytics on the otherdomain server will likely be useless, though, as all requests will be logged as coming from your server unless custom logging is implemented on otherdomain.

Jim