Redirect, Frame and DNS - Building Your Own Website

I mentioned yesterday about pointing a domain name at the hosting. If you are not hosting the website with the same company as you have the site registered at, then you need to tell the registration company where to find the website. Here's 3 ways of doing that.

First, redirection. Either the host does this or you can put a single page up to do this - but we're assuming the second isn't the case - you would need hosting... Basically all that this does is when the visitor types in your URL they are they sent - redirected - to a different URL. For example, this may be to a free hosting system.

Second is framing. Here instead of transferring the visitor to the new site, your visitor instead sees the other website displayed in a window on the page - known as a frame. Done properly, this can show the URL that was entered rather than the actual URL.

Lastly is DNS settings. This is how to do it properly - we'll look at the pros and cons tomorrow. Here you simply say 'for this website, go to these hosts'. Personally, this is the best way forward, but this is not always possible. For example, I don't know any free hosts that you could use DNS settings with as the host also has to use the real website name.