I really need MrVibrating if he is around [grin]

[DoNotAsfinishedXmasshopping]

A week or so ago you were advising me on we type stuff here.

I think that I have decided to go with your recommendation for hosting (simple web hosting) but wondered if you could clarify a couple of things for me?

1. would I be able to do that http 301 redirect thing with them? (googling suggests that you can't do it with all hosts). And when I get this far would you help me if I need it - using your email on the other thread?

1. they seem quite expensive for domain name registration. If I register with another agency - such as UK2 how do I get my site hosted at simplewebhosting to work with my domain?

1. I have downloaded a "backup copy" of my home directory that I had on teh cpanel over at OxyUK. Would I just be able to upload this to the new host?

Ta for now....I am sure I will think of some other things soon...

[nannynick]

Can I respond to point 2?

UK2 seem to charge £2.99 for a domain name, per year. SimpleDomainNames charges £5. For £2.01, is it not worth letting SimpleWebHosting (SWH) deal with DNS settings?
If you went with UK2, you would need to POINT the domain to the SWH servers. UK2 charge £11.99 per year to POINT a domain, without having their advertising.
Still want to save that £2.01?

[DoNotAsfinishedXmasshopping]

Sorry - what exactly are you saying?

Should i host and register with UK2 or host and register with simple?

[DoNotAsfinishedXmasshopping]

Fasthosts seem to do everything I want - including hte automated web forwarding but they get CRAP reviews.

UK2 seem to do web forwarding - but I don't think it is the sort I want - as you say I haev o pay £12 to forward without advertising.

[nannynick]

UK2 will charge you £11.99 per domain, per year to point the domain to other servers... so to me that makes the £5 per year fee for a domain from Simple much more attractive.

If you are hosting with Simple, domain register with them as well.

Looking at their website, if you get the starter hosting package, looks like you get a .co.uk domain for free.

[DoNotAsfinishedXmasshopping]

Problem is that my .co.uk domain name is already taken (on my behalf by a crap web host that I have no chance of getting it back from for 3 months).

I need mycompany.com as my primary domain name.

I would like placedrivinginstructor.co.uk as a 2nd domain name though redirected to mycompany.com.

[DoNotAsfinishedXmasshopping]

Who do you use to host NN? would you reommend them?

[DoNotAsfinishedXmasshopping]

Actually their .com names are the same price as elsewhere - so won't loose out there. And the .co.uk will come in free - so I just need to check if I can do my redirection and upload of existing site.

[DoNotAsfinishedXmasshopping]

And I have just foudn the answer to my redirects question on the simple webpage.

Now I just need ton know about uploading hte web-site which I have as a back-up copy on my hard drive. I don't really want to re-design it (although it could do with a bit of a spring clean in the scripting when I have a rainy day)

[nannynick]

Could you not just FTP the site up? If you have it on your harddrive as a folder with files in it, or a folder with files and other folders in it, I can't see why it could not be uploaded via FTP. If you have any Pearl scripts, then you may need to play around with CHMOD a bit, but I would not expect there would be much trouble.

I host with 34sp.com... cost's from £18 a year. It's budget hosting, but I find the uptime is reliable. Probably not the best webhost for a newbie, but I've been fine with them... and I didn't know much to start with.

[DoNotAsfinishedXmasshopping]

It is in a zipped file ATM.

Looking on various forums it looks quite straightfoward as both my old host and simple use the cPanel client. I think there is a slight bit of tweaking regarding needing to have the same username on both accounts. I am sure that is something that can be sorted.

I have found an email address for simple to clarify. It is amazing how many hosting companies don't supply a contact email for prospective customers . Simple even have about 7 options for instant messaging. They seem to care about their customers

[MrVibrating]

Well I wasn't around then but I am now .

Just a couple of things to add:

If your site is zipped up, it is easy to upload it to your web space and unzip it there - this is true for any host using the cPanel software (which many hosts do, including all those we are talking about here except Fasthosts).

NN the price you mention for uk2.net Web Diversion is not relevent: we don't need this, we need Domain Hosting which is £2.49+VAT on top of the Domain Registration fee (note that this is a beat of a cheat by UK2, most places include Domain Hosting with Domain Registration). Nevertheless, I agree there is no big reason not to use SWH for everything.

Finally, I wouldn't recommend uploading your whole Home Directory backup, unless you have databases or email accounts from the old host you want to keep. Probably best to tell SWH what you want and let them sort it.

[DoNotAsfinishedXmasshopping]

I have just had an email back from technical support (they are most helpful)

They say that I will need to have 3 hosting packages to do teh http 301 thing. Kind of seems like a bit of a con in that I will only actually have 1 website - although I am assuming that the http301 redirect coding classes as a website? but that I can have them at 50% discount. Still works out expensive though. I could obviously get to for the price of 1 though which helps!

Could you please explain what a parked domain is (compared to a http 301)? I see that I appear to be able to have unlimited parked domains. I think you said on my other thread though that this would be a disadvantage as far as SEO.

I only have 1 .co.uk domain that I want. But I as I will get 2 free with 2 hosting packages I will take them both (if I can find 2 sensible ones) - even if it is to block competitors! Is it wiser for me NOT to park this "unwanted but free so I will take it" domain - because of the SEO disadvanatges? Are there disadvantages or just that there aree no advantages?

Sorry. I don't really understand all this thoroughly enough. I want to do what is best value and best for my business with that money. I am just trying to get my strategy right before launching into it as I got it wrong last time. Our website is our ONLY means of advertising for 80% of the year so I want to get the best out of it that I can.

[MrVibrating]

There are some crossed wires here, but don't worry because you don't need 3 hosting accounts, everything will work - I'll show you how to set it up .

You want one hosting account, set up for one of the domains. Park all of your domains on this account. This means that they will all point to the same place, so that www.mysite.com/this_page.html is the same as www.myothersite.co.uk/this_page.html. This is not ideal for SEO, so we will use some trickery to tell any browser (or robot) that looks for www.myothersite.co.uk/any_page.html that that page has moved permanently (which is what a 301 redirect means) to www.mysite.com/any_page.html. More details later.

I am glad SWH are providing good support: that's why I recommended them .

[DoNotAsfinishedXmasshopping]

So they have given me a code for 50% off 2-3 accounts. I guess it would be cheeky for me to use that code if I am only getting 1 account now - so I won't lose anything by having 2 domains for hte price of 1 IYSWIM.....

If they are goingt o do 2 for the price of 1 then I thought I could have 1 page site where teh home page is subtley different. I can see how I could really get lots of keywords stuffed (but not stuffed in teh bad SEO sense) into that home page. Then the menu on that page links into main website which provides me with links in and out of both sites which would be good for SEO.

What I am saying is that I have

www.fullwebsite.com (with all the pages)

www.differenthomepage.co.uk (which has identical layout and menus but different page content on the home page) but all the links point to the pages on the full website.
So I benefit from having lots of hot keywords under the hot keyword domain name - rather than just a 301 redirect. And from having links out of this page to my main domain. I also benefit from having links into my main domain. Or am I just over complicating it?

So behind my waffling....

Would I be cheeky using hte 50% discount code they have given me on a single hosting account?
If yes then would I be better having 1 domain for £60 - all parked all with 301s OR 2 domains - as described above?
I guess that after a year they will start to charge me full price for both at renewal time which I guess is the advantage of going with 1 now.



I will email you my current site so you can "see" a bit clearer what I am thinking of. But it will have to wait until I have been to teh butchers.

[DoNotsAntlers]

Hi MrVibrating. I hope I haven't confused you.

I am really looking for advice on how to proceed. I will do the best option. But if it is the 1 account parking thing then I would really like some help to sort out the redirection.

I am really feeling lost as to the best option. I am eally good at following instructions. I just need some instructions to follow

[MrVibrating]

To redirect all requests for otherdomain.com to maindomain.com, you need to have a file called .htaccess (nothing before the dot) in your root directory with the following lines:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} otherdomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ www.maindomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

[DoNotsAntlers]

TY very much. I think I am going with 1 hosting - 2 domains - (which I may add too at a later date if we see any positive value (as opposed to just defensive value) from it.

So that goes in my directory called "home"?
So I write the file in notepad or similar? and just do file save as .htaccess?

TY you are most helpful

[MrVibrating]

I should have said that the .htaccess file goes in the public_html directory. It is probably best to use cPanel to create ('Create new file' - make it a text file) and edit ('Edit File') it: Notepad doesn't get on very well with Linux text files.

[DoNotsAntlers]

OK

I hope to sort this out by teh end of the weekend. I will shout if I need more help if that is OK.

[DoNotsAntlers]

For future reference (when I get me own .co.uk back) do I add the last 2 lines to the same document

so it would become

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} otherdomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ www.maindomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} otherdomain2.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ www.maindomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

?

[MrVibrating]

Yes, exactly that

[DoNotsAntlers]

Told you I am a fast learner . Must be my excellent tutor of course !

[DoNotsAntlers]

OK i have a question (sorry - it will all be over by teh end of the weekend)

I have my old website hosted on .oxyUK.net domain but I have lost my .co.uk site.

Can I put a 301 redirect thingy in the root directory on teh oxyUK.net site to redirect the .co.uk traffic (from the domain which I no longer have access to) to my new site? Or can I do nothing at all as the .co.uk domain no longer exists...

[MrVibrating]

No, I am afraid that Dynadot control the records for yourwebsite.co.uk, and they have pointed it to their 'this domain has expired' page - there is no longer any link with the (p)oxyUK server so anything you put there will do nothing.

You can redirect yourwebsite.oxyuk.net though, and as Google has started to index it (look at www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:yourwebsite.oxyuk.net) that is probably a good idea once the .com is running.

[DoNotsAntlers]

Just a thought. Nevermind

So I out that script in my root directory on the Oxy cPanel? I assume I only need to it for the home page and all other pages get redirected?