Domain mapping allows you to point multiple domains to your main website (primary domain). For example, you can map your-site.co.uk and your-website.co.uk to your primary domain yoursite.co.uk. Making a change to your primary domain will automatically update your mapped domains, so there’s no need to worry about updating the content or design of multiple websites.
Visitors will continue to see your-site.co.uk and your-website.co.uk addresses in their browser to avoid confusion, but all the same content on your primary domain will be visible to them.For example, typing http://your-site.co.uk will load the content at http://yoursite.co.uk, or http://your-site.co.uk/contact.html would load http://yoursite.co.uk/contact.html if the domain had existing files and folders prior to the domain mapping.
Once at the primary domain website, any links clicked within your web pages that are using the full address (i.e. http://yoursite.co.uk/contact.html) will switch over to the primary domain and all content will load from http://yoursite.co.uk as normal. If your primary domain’s page links are configured within your website using just the page filenames (i.e. contact.html and not using the full address) then the mapped domain will continue to appear in the web browser’s address bar.
Please note that domain mapping cannot map directly onto a sub-domain or a specific folder on a website. Domains can only be mapped onto the root of the domain and its contents (i.e. your-site.co.uk mapped to yoursite.co.uk, not your-site.co.uk mapped to sub-domain.yoursite.co.uk or yoursite.co.uk/folder/).
Mapped domains include the same email features as provided with your primary domain hosting package, including WebMail. To manage email (mailboxes, forwarding, email filtering, etc.) for a mapped domain, simply login to the Web Control Panel for the primary domain and the mapped domain will appear in a pull-down menu within the email settings pages.
Domain Mapping Pricing & Details
In order for domain mapping to work, both domains must be on our system. The main website (primary domain) should be a web hosting account and the domain to be mapped should be added as a Domain Extra to either a new or existing domain with our domain service at domainsplus.uk.
Web Forwarding
An alternative to domain mapping is web forwarding (or web redirect). This will allow http://your-site.co.uk (or any pre-set web page) to redirect completely onto the website at http://yoursite.co.uk (or any pre-set web page). As soon as the redirect has occurred (which is seamless and instantaneous) then the domain and all content will appear from http://yoursite.co.uk.
With web forwarding, you can create multiple redirect web addresses on the same domain, but each redirect can only forward onto one web address at a time.
For example, http://your-site.co.uk/products.html can redirect to http://yoursite.co.uk/products.html or onto http://your-new-site.co.uk/products.html, and http://your-site.co.uk/gallery/ could redirect to http://your-new-site.co.uk/photos/ or even http://your-site.co.uk/gallery/ onto http://your-site.co.uk/photos/
There are two different types of forwarding available: framed and non-framed.
- Framed forwarding will forward one web address onto another (as shown above) but the web address will always remain the same in the web browser’s address bar, even if you click an external link to a different website.
- Non-framed forwarding will forward to the target address but the web address will instantly change in the web browser’s address bar and display the address it has forwarded onto.
Web Redirect is available from your Web Control Panel for web hosting (and domainsplus.uk domain only) accounts after April 2010. Template web forwarding HTML pages are available as a free .zip download from us here.