Domains, URLs, Sub-domains etc

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Permalink Reply by Rick Brown on October 26, 2008 at 9:56am

Hi Judith,

Let's see if I can help with part of this, assuming I'm understanding your question correctly - when speaking of these terms, we're talking first of all about using a domain name we own.

Let's say you've purchased - www.judithatkinson.com . For our examples, I'll refer to this as your primary domain name.

You can make that primary domain name point (forward) where ever you want - your webpage, blog, splash page or any other existing site, even your MPC or Facebook page if you wanted.

That's the forwarding part. You tell GoDaddy that when people type in www.judithatkinson.com or click on that link, where they will end up - "Forward" www.judithatkinson.com to www.whateversiteIwant.com

Now, once people land where ever your primary domain takes them (forwarding), let's say your Facebook page for example, in the window at the top of every browser (where you see the http://www. whatever...) you'll see the actual web address of the page you've sent folks to.

In our example of your FB page, you'd see something like -
http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1198846770.
Not too attractive and not easy to remember.

If you don't want people to see that long, ugly address, then you would tell GoDaddy to "MASK" it with your primary domain name. So now, when someone types in www.judithatkinson.com, they'll end up at your FB page and the browser window will read www.judithatkinson.com as opposed to the long, ugly FB address - that's Masking. The point being that it's easier for people to remember your nice, tidy domain name rather than the long, ugly FB one.

Finally, with subdomains, you can make off-shoots of your primary domain name (I think 99 subs in GoDaddy) to point (forward) anywhere you want. For example, you might want to create the subdomain - facebook.judithatkinson.com (the "facebook" part being the sub)- to point to your FB page and save the primary domain name for your primary website. You can use the subdomains to mask as well.

Now, when it comes to hosts and whatnot, as we say in the Army, that's above my paygrade. The real techies will have to answer that one.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!
Rick

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Permalink Reply by Judith Atkinson on October 28, 2008 at 3:23pm

Rick that was fantastic, so clear and concise. Now I only need Go Daddy to tell me which buttons to push and I will have lift off.

I have made my own splash page for
Is this a sub domain or not? because in my mind it is still part of the same domain. I am not actually sending it to: for example : Leader's club with a different domain name, it's just a page in googlespage creator that I want to mask and open without opening the whole website.

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Permalink Reply by Rick Brown on October 28, 2008 at 9:32pm

Judith, I think something is missing in your last note. I don't see anything after "...splash page for" so not sure how to answer your question.

For a subdomain to be a subdomain, you have to physically go into godaddy and make it. The subdomain you make will be subdomain.judithatkinson.com where "subdomain" is whatever you want it to be.

You can then redirect it to a secondary page within your website, or anywhere else you want it to go.

If you have trouble setting up godaddy and need some help, feel free to give me a call and I'll do my best to walk you through it. 410-971-6947

Cheers!
Rick

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Permalink Reply by Judith Atkinson on October 30, 2008 at 12:49pm

Thanks Rick for your help. I will let you know how I progress.

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Permalink Reply by Diane Hochman on November 1, 2008 at 4:44pm

This is SUPER!!!! Rick comes to the rescue helping his colleague. Love it.

If you get stuck let us know Judith. We can do some video tutorials lickity split.

Sounds more like you are dealing with forwarding issues as opposed to domains and subdomains if you are using google pages.

Google pages are way cool in my opinion.

Letting us set up free pages on anything whenever we want.

HUGE!!!

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