To point or to forward - a quick note on domain handling

byAndyEB

195 followers

10 years ago

This is a very quick post but I thought some might find it helpful when setting up a new domain name.

when you register a new domain, you will be given an option to set new nameservers or to set it to forward to another domain.

Let's say you have already made a start on building your new website on a siterubix sub-domain. It might be tempting to just tell your new domain to forward to the existing site. This easy to do. Just a s easy as setting an email address to forward to another.

But it would be a big mistake and it really isn't difficult to set new nameservers.

You see, Google won't find anything at your new URL. It will crawl your siterubix site which will show in search results because that is where all your content is. When Google robots go to your new domain, it doesn't find anything to crawl except a code to redirect. So, to have your site's new domain listed in SE results, it must actually have the site content itself, which is only done by having the URL go directly to your WA site.

You'll have to find where to do this at your domain registrar as they are all slightly different, but as almost all domain owners will do this, it will likely be a default step in your setup.

Where asked, you simply enter ns1.mywahosting.com and ns2.mywahosting.com as 1st and 2nd nameserver. This is also called setting new DNS.

It will take anything up to 48 hours for this to be fully actioned. When you have confirmation from your registrar that it has been done -

Then, come back to your website management dashboard here at WA and click on 'move' for your existing siterubix site. enter your new domain and it should confirm everything is fine. Read warning that pops up and confirm again.

Job done.