iWeb '08 Personal Domain Name Follow Up--Web Forwarding

[8/21] [Updated] iWeb '08 Personal Domain Name Follow Up--Web Forwarding

Yesterday, we posted an article on how to make it easy to set up a personal domain name like MyBog.com using an alias for your .Mac-hosted Web site produced by iWeb '08. Several readers (Ryoichi Morita was first) pointed out that there are registrars, such as EasyDNS.com, that provide a service called "Web forwarding."

Web forwarding is similar to creating an alias in that people type in your personal domain name like MyBlog.com and are sent (forwarded) to your .Mac Web site like web.mac.com/YourDotMacID. The difference is that with plain Web forwarding, once people are at your .Mac Web site they no longer see MyBlog.com in their web browser but instead see the real URL, i.e. web.mac.com/YourDotMacID. With an alias, they always see MyBlog.com.

There is an additional service with web forwarding called "masking" that accomplishes the same thing as an alias. Most registrars charge for web forwarding, but not for the additional masking, while setting up an alias is free. This may be a minor difference to you and, if so, then Web forwarding is easy to set up and can be done with .Mac Web sites created with earlier versions of iWeb. [Update: Added "masking" service pointed out by reader Scott Newman.] [Bill Fox]