Help with redirecting

bob1163

I am setting up a website for a friend, He has been offered a really good domain name that he can use for the foreseeable future. The owner of the domain will not transfer the name to us as there may come a time that he will want it. What the owner will do is get it to point at our site. I have never done this and i am wondering what do i have to do. I have a website with hosting that has a shared ip address. What information do i have to give the owner, would i want to get separate hosting that does not have an domain already. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Regards Bob

miju

you do realise what the domain name holder is going to do dont you. He's going to get you to sweat and to promote his domain name and build up links in the search engines and traffic to the domain until he will "need it" and your friend will be back to square one.

meanwhile mr. domain owner is laughing with all his freely earned traffic to help him get his site going.

dont be a complete sucker my advice is forget the domain name and buy a similiar one sounding one

louie

I double Miju on this

mneylon

I'd strongly recommend you get a written agreement for the domain usage, as otherwise the owner could yank it at will

As for pointing it...

Two options:

1. Add it to your hosting account and get the owner to update the nameservers to point to your provider's

2. Get the owner to update the DNS records to point at the shared IP - you'll need to add the domain to your control panel

Obviously how you do 1 + 2 will vary on the providers you're using, but I suspect your provider's support team can direct you

Axwell

Im with Miju on this, avoid it like the plague, not only will you be building up traffic to his domain but when the time comes and he wants it back your clients wont know where your site is gone and you have no way of redirecting them to your new one. Definitely just go for a different or similar domain so that you are using it from day one

forbairt

As has been said. ..

Forget it .. get your own domain name. Do some research .. find out whats available and build on that.

Otherwise what you'll end up doing is making the other domain popular and then losing it and all the traffic you've worked hard to generate.

Webmonkey

get your own domain tbh - too risky.

MyClondalkin

Is it an Irish .ie domain ?

If its just a .com, it cant be that great, that you couldn't come up with an alternative, for what its worth a .com domain name will only cost €4.50, so ask yourself, is it worth the hassle dealing with someone that wont transfer.

Either way, if you decide to go ahead, all you need to supply him is DNS, (Domain Name Servers), which will be the same as your current domain, provided you can addon domains to your existing hosting package.

If your unsure how to find out what your DNS settings are, drop by here xtld.com put in your current domain name, and from the results, look for:

Domain servers in listed order:

(usually something like this.)

ns1.SomeDomainName.com
ns2.SomeDomainName.com

jhegarty

If you started a new business you wouldn't use someone else's name that they may want back....


pay the $6 and get your own domain

bob1163

I agree that the last thing you would want to do is use a domain that you do not own but that is what is required. That domain is owned by the goverment so there is a good chance that they wont use the site to generate traffic for themselves and take it back at a later date.
Regards Bob

Axwell

bob1163 wrote: »

I agree that the last thing you would want to do is use a domain that you do not own but that is what is required. That domain is owned by the goverment so there is a good chance that they wont use the site to generate traffic for themselves and take it back at a later date.
Regards Bob

Well theres just as much chance they might decide to from what you are saying if they want to keep it in case they change their mind about using it and if that site changes you will lose all the traffic and the identity you had built up. Why dont you just buy a similar domain and not have any of the worry or stress its the simpler option by far.

forbairt

erm ... this sounds weirder and weirder .. hmm...

You are pretty much still talking about building traffic for their domain not your own.

I'd steer clear unless you can get some type of contract signed that you are happy with.

p

Yea, make sure you get a contract so that you have rights to usage of the domain for X number of years. Then work your business plan around that.

To answer your original question, all you do is need to get him to point the site at your DNS servers, and set up the site with your hosting company. The hosting company will help you if you've any problems, it's fairly straight-forward.

miju

this sounds very strange. I've never heard of any IT Department leasing a domain name. Would you mind stating the domain name because this is a very strange truth be told

bob1163

The site will be castleisland.ie. Castleisland is a town in County Kerry and the domain is held by the Kerry County Council as are most town names held by County Councils.

Axwell

I dont see why your friend would want this domain for a business in te first place? Or how it would really be any benefit to him over a diffrerent one

jhegarty

this is the worst idea since flashing fonts