OT: Web tech help please

bornagainroadie

I'm hoping someone more net savvy than me can help out here.

I built a website to support a sponsored ride I am doing in June (Pyrenean Raid in support of Prostate Cancer). This website is hosted as http://www.kandevsys.com/raid2012 however, to make it easier for folk to remember I registered the domain www.raid2012.info and used a URL redirection to point to http://www.kandevsys.com/raid2012. I have since used www.raid2012.info in various places to promote the event. So far so good, this all works.

However, talking to some of my potential sponsors it seems they are having problems with www.raid2012.info as they are typing this into the google/bing search bar of their browsers out of habit and they are getting no relevant hits. I presume this is because its a URL redirection and has no content in its own right so Google don't return it. Is there a way to fix this or should I just get www.raid2012.info properly hosted?

Thanks for any help. I hate the idea of losing support because of a technical issue. There is no chance I am going to be able to educate some of the potential sponsors into the difference between a web address and a google/bing search.

Many thanks
Nick

davis

The "best" way of doing this is to change http://www.raid2012.info from a "URL redirection" (which is itself a website of sorts) to a simple DNS entry for http://www.kandevsys.com, and change your webserver config so that any client requesting "www.raid2012.info" from the host "www.kandevsys.com" will get served the page http://www.kandevsys.com/raid2012

Essentially there will be two DNS entries (http://www.raid2012.info, and http://www.kandevsys.com) pointing to your "main" host http://www.kandevsys.com, and that main host responds differently if it's spoken to as if it's raid2012 (this last bit is accomplished by something called Virtual Hosting (vhosts) in Apache-speak, and you're probably using Apache).

Edit: Either this, or your suggestion of switching to having it "properly hosted"... Both are equally fine, I'd have thought my way would be cheaper..

bornagainroadie

Hi Davis,
Thanks for the info. I understand how your solution would work. Unfortunately I don't have the necessary access to the hosting server to accomplish it. Getting the domain fully hosted and redeploying the content to the new site host is probably my easiest option.

It just never occurred to me that folk would Google for a URL that you gave them rather than typing it in. Live and learn.

Cheers
Nick

CiB

If users can break whatever act of genius you come up with, they will. <crosses fingers on Stats tweak...>

PBo

BornAgainRoadie wrote:

It just never occurred to me that folk would Google for a URL that you gave them rather than typing it in. Live and learn.

Cheers
Nick

if i had my way, people who do this would have their computers forcibly removed.

Same for people who don't bookmark, but google "facebook" or whatever every time....