1and1 web forwarding?

Can someone with 1and1 domain hosting experience please answer this
simple question -- for some reason, all 4 responses from their support
people miss the point completely. I am now convinced they don't read the
support queries properly before they reply.

I set up mydomain.com to point to my_isp_webspace.com without frames and
expected that, like other domain hosts I am familiar with, they would
replace any request for www.mydomain.com/any_file_or_folder with
www.my_isp_webspace.com/any_file_or_folder. Instead, any such request is
forwarded to the root folder only, i.e. to this specific URL:
www.my_isp_webspace.com When I enquire they either give me an irrelevant
answer or they claim that's how it is supposed to work and I simply can't
believe it. If this was true, their forwarding would be unusable.

Any ideas?

--
Michael Klontzas
Before enlightenment / chopping wood / carrying water
After enlightenment / chopping wood / carrying water
Zen Proverb

Michael Klontzas wrote:
> Can someone with 1and1 domain hosting experience please answer this
> simple question -- for some reason, all 4 responses from their support
> people miss the point completely. I am now convinced they don't read
> the support queries properly before they reply.
>
> I set up mydomain.com to point to my_isp_webspace.com without frames
> and expected that, like other domain hosts I am familiar with, they
> would replace any request for www.mydomain.com/any_file_or_folder with
> www.my_isp_webspace.com/any_file_or_folder. Instead, any such request
> is forwarded to the root folder only, i.e. to this specific URL:
> www.my_isp_webspace.com When I enquire they either give me an
> irrelevant answer or they claim that's how it is supposed to work and
> I simply can't believe it. If this was true, their forwarding would
> be unusable.
>
> Any ideas?

With one of my previous ISPs (not 1&1) it mattered if the forwarding URL
ended with a "/" - I forget which way round it was, but with (or without?)
the slash it acted as you describe. Without (or with?) it forwarded
correctly.
--
LSR

"Michael Klontzas" <michael-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Can someone with 1and1 domain hosting experience please answer this
> simple question -- for some reason, all 4 responses from their support
> people miss the point completely. I am now convinced they don't read the
> support queries properly before they reply.
>
> I set up mydomain.com to point to my_isp_webspace.com without frames and
> expected that, like other domain hosts I am familiar with, they would
> replace any request for www.mydomain.com/any_file_or_folder with
> www.my_isp_webspace.com/any_file_or_folder. Instead, any such request is
> forwarded to the root folder only, i.e. to this specific URL:
> www.my_isp_webspace.com When I enquire they either give me an irrelevant
> answer or they claim that's how it is supposed to work and I simply can't
> believe it. If this was true, their forwarding would be unusable.
>
> Any ideas?

That is the normal behaviour for web forwarding with almost all providers of
web forwarding.
I think what you really want is proper addressing of the pages.
You would need to have proper web hosting for the domain to do that.

To explain how forwarding works.
If you do it without frames this normally tells the server to send a 301
redirect to the single web page set in the forwarding system.
If you do it with frames it will make a single web page which is a frame
containing whichever page you want to redirect to.


--


Gordon Hudson || Hostroute.com Ltd
e-mail:ghudson [at] hostroute.net
http://www.hostroute.co.uk/resellers Host 5 web sites for £9 per month
http://www.nameroute.co.uk/ Domain Names with free hosting and email
http://www.myqth.co.uk/ 3000MB of web space for £29 per year

On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:22:51 +0100, Gordon Hudson wrote:

> That is the normal behaviour for web forwarding with almost all providers of
> web forwarding.
> I think what you really want is proper addressing of the pages.
> You would need to have proper web hosting for the domain to do that.

Let me get that straight. Are you saying a web page cannot link to, and a
user cannot go directly to, say, www.mydomain.com/info.html unless I buy
proper web hosting? How is the free forwarding even remotely useful then
if it redirects all requests to the root directory? If what you are
saying is true, it seems I'll keep my other domains with 123-reg.co.uk
for a long time, and transfer my domains from 1and1 accordingly since
123-reg.co.uk seem to offer free forwarding that actually works.

> To explain how forwarding works.
> If you do it without frames this normally tells the server to send a 301
> redirect to the single web page set in the forwarding system.
> If you do it with frames it will make a single web page which is a frame
> containing whichever page you want to redirect to.

And that 'whichever page you want to redirect to' is a single, specific
page, right?

In the meanwhile, I'll experiment with LSR's suggestion and see what
happens. Thanks for the input.

--
Michael Klontzas
Before enlightenment / chopping wood / carrying water
After enlightenment / chopping wood / carrying water
Zen Proverb

On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:55:41 +0100, LSR wrote:

> With one of my previous ISPs (not 1&1) it mattered if the forwarding URL
> ended with a "/" - I forget which way round it was, but with (or without?)
> the slash it acted as you describe. Without (or with?) it forwarded
> correctly.

It doesn't seem to have an effect. With 1and1's popularity I would expect
lots of people to know the answer to this, or to have moved to another
domain host with web forwarding that actually works is a useful way. I
would find 1and1's popularity very strange if their web forwarding was
indeed so pointless (excuse the pun).

--
Michael Klontzas
Before enlightenment / chopping wood / carrying water
After enlightenment / chopping wood / carrying water
Zen Proverb

"Michael Klontzas" <michael-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...

> Let me get that straight. Are you saying a web page cannot link to, and a
> user cannot go directly to, say, www.mydomain.com/info.html unless I buy
> proper web hosting?

Thats the case with almost all forwarding services.

> How is the free forwarding even remotely useful then
> if it redirects all requests to the root directory? If what you are
> saying is true, it seems I'll keep my other domains with 123-reg.co.uk
> for a long time, and transfer my domains from 1and1 accordingly since
> 123-reg.co.uk seem to offer free forwarding that actually works.

Do they forward to individual pages with the correct masked addresses?
They didn't the last time I used them but maybe they changed.
Thats a very resource intensive way of doing it which is why hardly anyone
does it that way.

> And that 'whichever page you want to redirect to' is a single, specific
> page, right?

Single page yes.
If you wanted it to go to sperate ones you would need to use something like
mod_rewrite which might bog things down.

Web forwarding is not the correct way to connect a domain name to space on a
web server.
Thats the fundamental problem you are dealing with and without the owner of
the server cooperating then you can't really do it properly.


--
Gordon Hudson || Hostroute.com Ltd
e-mail:ghudson [at] hostroute.net
http://www.hostroute.co.uk/resellers Host 5 web sites for £9 per month
http://www.nameroute.co.uk/ Domain Names with free hosting and email
http://www.myqth.co.uk/ 3000MB of web space for £29 per year

"Michael Klontzas" <michael-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:22:51 +0100, Gordon Hudson wrote:
>
>> That is the normal behaviour for web forwarding with almost all providers
>> of
>> web forwarding.
>> I think what you really want is proper addressing of the pages.
>> You would need to have proper web hosting for the domain to do that.
>
> Let me get that straight. Are you saying a web page cannot link to, and a
> user cannot go directly to, say, www.mydomain.com/info.html unless I buy
> proper web hosting? How is the free forwarding even remotely useful then
> if it redirects all requests to the root directory? If what you are
> saying is true, it seems I'll keep my other domains with 123-reg.co.uk
> for a long time, and transfer my domains from 1and1 accordingly since
> 123-reg.co.uk seem to offer free forwarding that actually works.

Well, with freeparking.co.uk the web forwarding works (for me) like this;
If you browse to www.mydomain.co.uk it'll forward to whatever address (or
IP) that you like. It also does URL masking so the address bar will still
show www.mydomain.co.uk.
If you browse to www.mydomain.co.uk/stuff.htm directly, then the address
isn't masked but shows the forwarded address and the /stuff.htm at the end
(e.g. www.freeserve.mylogin.co.uk/stuff.htm ).

On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 13:24:13 +0100, Gordon Hudson wrote:
> Do they forward to individual pages with the correct masked addresses?
> They didn't the last time I used them but maybe they changed.
> Thats a very resource intensive way of doing it which is why hardly anyone
> does it that way.

With 123-reg.co.uk if you visit www.mydomain.com/sub/stuff.html you will
get www.my_isp_webspace.com/sub/stuff.html and your browser address bar
will show the full my_isp_webspace address. Ideally of course the visitor
would see the mydomain.com address only, so I don't think this qualifies
as proper masking. What I meant was that with 123-reg.co.uk web
forwarding works properly with paths and allows you to use your webspace
as an addressable remote disk, with subdomains and everything.

If I understand the 'other' approach correctly, with most domain hosts
you can only have one entry point to your webspace: the root directory,
which basically makes web forwarding useless. So, if I design a set of
webpages and put them on my isp's server, if I move them to another isp I
will have to re-write them to point to, say, www.my_new_isp.com/icon.gif
etc! (I know you can use relative addressing, but that's not the point
here). With 123-reg's approach I can point to www.mydomain.com/icon.gif
right from the beginning and it will always work regardless of actual
server address, as long as I update the web forwarding setting.

123-reg.co.uk has been working like that since at least 2002 when I
joined them and it is still working this way. Considering this and that
123-reg is one of the cheapest web hosts around, I had assumed all other
domain hosts did the same. It looks like I had underestimated them and I
might as well move back to them.

> Web forwarding is not the correct way to connect a domain name to space on a
> web server.
> Thats the fundamental problem you are dealing with and without the owner of
> the server cooperating then you can't really do it properly.

I agree that URL masking will not work properly. But forwarding to any
path/file has been working flawlessly here with 123-reg.co.uk since 2002.
That's all I am asking. Since their price for a com domain actually
matches 1and1's low price, I don't see why others can't offer the same
facility. From a consumer's point of view, the choice is a no-brainer
(assuming they know these facts).

--
Michael Klontzas
Before enlightenment / chopping wood / carrying water
After enlightenment / chopping wood / carrying water
Zen Proverb

On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 13:31:09 +0100, Grumps wrote:
> Well, with freeparking.co.uk the web forwarding works (for me) like this;
> If you browse to www.mydomain.co.uk it'll forward to whatever address (or
> IP) that you like. It also does URL masking so the address bar will still
> show www.mydomain.co.uk.
> If you browse to www.mydomain.co.uk/stuff.htm directly, then the address
> isn't masked but shows the forwarded address and the /stuff.htm at the end
> (e.g. www.freeserve.mylogin.co.uk/stuff.htm ).

This sounds very promising. For a bit more than 123-reg or 1and1 they
offer mailboxes too. Thanks for the tip.

--
Michael Klontzas
Before enlightenment / chopping wood / carrying water
After enlightenment / chopping wood / carrying water
Zen Proverb