How do i create short Urls or path forwarding?

[SereneAngel]

Hello all
Im new here... so forgive me for possibly bringing up a subject that has been raised before, and also if i have posted in wrong section. Have done a search on Webmaster world but as yet not found what i was looking for which is...

I own a few domains which are all hosted under one paid webspace package.

I am creating a new website for one of my domains, where i shall be hosting one page web presenses for my clients. Now this is easy enough to do, but can look untidy and can be too long. i.e www.example.co.uk/joebloggs.html.

I see there is another way of tidying this up and have ended up at many url pathforwarding companies, but i don't what their names, i want mine! And i am interested in making the url look rather like this: www.joebloggs.example.co.uk.

Have been searching all morning, and still come up with very little on how to do this from your own site, and now so confused by Url cloaking, Url framing, Url masking, and the path forwarwding. Heeeelp...

Is there some lovely person out there who knows how i can do this? As i am turning into a not so SereneAngel :)

PS.My coding knowledge stops at HTML, CSS and a bit of plug and play JavaScripting...so if it's complicated, better explain it simply...Cheers SA

[lammert]

SereneAngel,

First of all welcome to WebmasterWorld!

I am not sure if I understand your wordings correct. Let me explain some basic terms.

A domain is a first part of the URL without www etc. For example in www.example.co.uk/joebloggs.html, the part example.co.uk is the domain. A website is a group of URL's together forming a bunch of information managed by a webmaster. A domain and a website could be one, but not in all cases. On the domain webmasterworld.com one website is hosted, but on geocities.com you can find many smaller websites, all hosted under one domain name.

What you want to do is adding sub-domains to an already existing domain. Instead of www.example.co.uk, you would like to use joebloggs.example.co.uk, etc.

To do this, the domain example.co.uk has to be registered by yourself, and you must have access to the DNS server for the domain example.co.uk. The DNS server (short for domain name server) is a computer somewhere on the internet where the translation is done from the name joebloggs.example.co.uk to the IP address where this site can be found.

So my questions are the following:

• Did you accidentally mix up the words domain and website in your post and are you actually owning a few websites on the same hosting package?
• Did you register the domain name example.co.uk, or is it the name of your hosting provider?
• If you own the domain name example.co.uk, did your hosting provider grant access to the DNS server to modify the settings for the domain?
  

[physics]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld.com!
If you're using Apache and have *.example.com pointed at your IP then you can set up each subdomain (i.e. joebloggs.example.com) as a VirtualHost. You can also use mod_rewrite to achieve the same thing. Look into apache virtualhost (unless you're on IIS) or ask your hosting company.

[SereneAngel]

Hi Lammert

Thanks for responding. In answer to your questions

1) Yes i think i did. I have a number of different web sites, each having their own domain name. All sharing the same hosting package. From what i remember, basically i have my root (which was the web space & domain i originally registered with) and then the additional domain names have been added over time and are basically sub-domains off that root..make sense?

2)They are my own domains, and not the name of my hosting provider which in this case is OneandOne...no noises through teeth please....been with them 6 years and get on very well with them : )

3)Now granting me access to the DNS server to modify the settings, I do believe i have, i can go into each of my domains which are listed individually in my control panel and can amend the the directory destination..and it mentions something in the manual about modifying DNS settings and creating sub domains etc...but i was under the impression that i could code within a page with JavaScript..Php or something like that rather than go in to the bowels of my web space!

So yes in the same way geocities.com or bravenet has smaller websites and have a name of your choice just mine on an extremely smaller scale...
such as reptiles.example.co.uk, the reptiles relating to their page, and the example.co.uk being my domain and all hosted on my web host.

Well if you know of any place i can read up in more depth about this just point this lass in the right direction! SA

[SereneAngel]

Thanks Physics for welcome and post

I do have an apache server and i am gonna look in to what you have suggested.

In mean time could masking or cloaking be of any use to me?

SA

[physics]

I don't see how cloaking is relevant, that has to do with serving different content based on the referring IP or user agent (usually to serve different content to search engine robots than to users).