Re-direct magic...How do they do that?

As an online marketer, I am always trying to improve my websites and save money when I can at the same time. I do my own websites and struggle through the HTML stuff.

My latest idea (not original) is to place several minisites on the same site using re-directs on the default page to send the visitor to the right page for a specific domain. (Bill Myers had an article about this a few weeks back.)

In my research on this I determined that GoDaddy.com where I have my domains registered can point one or more of my domains to my website for $9.95/year/domain. For an additional fee they can "mask" the re-direct so the visitor doesn't know they have been redirected to another site.

My question is "how do they do that?" I think I understand the redirect part, but how do they mask the domain name?

Thanks for any answers...

JDB


Remote Chatteling?

Hi John,

The code is called an invisible frame redirect, and I put the html up on a page located at:

http://www.cyberwave.com/invisible.html

There's a problem with this trick, and that is some versions of Windows running some versions of Explorer will constantly refresh the page. This hurts the user experience, and can screw up your stats if you are using pop-ups. I'm pretty sure the GoDaddy.com "mask" has this problem as well.

Nonetheless, it can come in handy in certain circumstances.

Jonathan




Amazing pop-ups make more sales!

JDB -

> My latest idea (not original) is to place
> several minisites on the same site using
> re-directs on the default page to send the
> visitor to the right page for a specific
> domain. (Bill Myers had an article about
> this a few weeks back.)

Yup. Dan Butler gave me the same idea. In fact, I've started implementing it with my latest efforts and plan to continue.

> In my research on this I determined that
> GoDaddy.com where I have my domains
> registered can point one or more of my
> domains to my website for $9.95/year/domain.
> For an additional fee they can
> "mask" the re-direct so the
> visitor doesn't know they have been
> redirected to another site.

Here's a free one; www.mydomain.com. That's who I'm using. Seems to be working well so far.

> My question is "how do they do
> that?" I think I understand the
> redirect part, but how do they mask the
> domain name?

I think Jonathan had the right answer. They all seem to work the same from what I understand. Mydomain.com gives you a choice to use "stealth" mode or not. In "stealth" mode, the underlying domain name will *not* appear. For example, my new site 10daystoagreatlife.com is actually hosted at netguerrilla.org/10dayslife/. If I used the "stealth" mode, the netguerrilla.org/10dayslife directory structure would not appear. However, stealth appears to cause issues with secure pages. This is apparently because of the invisible frame redirect as Jonathan points out. Therefore, even though I'm not using secure pages - although I could (my order pages are hosted on 3rd party secure sites), I'm not using stealth mode. The only downside seems to be that the underlying structure will appear once the viewer begins to page around.

Further, I seem to be able to use the redirected domain for setting up such things as the cgi-bin folder that's specific to this domain's reseller program, etc. For example, in the reseller setup, I have the path set to http://www.10daystoagreatlife.com/cgi-bin/signup.cgi, (it's called from an affiliate info page), but the true path is http://www.netguerrilla.org/10dayslife/cgi-bin/signup.cgi. So again. No problem.

Rick Smith, "The Net Guerrilla"


Click Here to See How Domain Redirection Works For Me