Hosting Articles

A domain alias is like having multiple
front doors to one location

Basically you can have two or more domain names that take you to a single site. Domain aliasing allows you to host a Web site on one domain and point other domain names to the site. It is also called domain name pointer to root or domain stacking.

When two or more domain names refer to the same account, it is called domain aliasing. Each domain name carries through the website in the address bar, so each domain name looks like the real domain name for the site.

When you set up a web hosting account, it is set up for one domain name. You can purchase a second domain name and point it to the IP address for the first domain name.

Domain aliasing is creating additional domain names that would point to the IP of a different domain. For example, if your domain name is test.com, you can register another domain name, e.g. test.net and have it point to the location of test.com. This means, every Internet user who goes to test.net will land in test.com.

A domain alias may have:

Domain Aliases have all the properties of a regular domain hosting account in terms of DNS and mail. The only difference is that the Domain Alias has no files (web pages) of its own. Instead it uses the files of the aliased domain name.

With a Domain Alias, the URL in the address bar of the users browser stays exactly as they typed it and would take a visitor to the exact same pages of your original domain.

Any e-mail messages sent to e-mailboxes under one of your domain aliases will also be automatically re-directed to the e-mailbox under your primary domain. All mails for test.net is treated as if it was actually addressed to test.com.

Some people use multiple domains aliased to a single site as part of their search engine strategy. You have the option of mapping Web site hits to directories other than your root Web directory on Concentric Hosting accounts.

With Domain forwarding, the Web browser connects to one Web server, and that Web page redirects the browser to another server. In this case, a Web user who types myfirstdomain.com is redirected to mydomain.com. The URL will change from myfirstdomain.com to mydomain.com.

Aliasing is typically faster than forwarding and is more transparent to Web users.

(Posted By Simon)