How to Park a Domain Name

The concept of parking a domain is simple. You take a domain name that you’ve purchased (e.g. www.me123.com) and simply tell all requests to that site to point to another location (e.g. www.freelargehosting.com/me123). The tools to park a domain are readily available in Apache with the MOD/Rewrite module loaded.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• internet access
• computer

1. Contact your domain registrar and request that they forward all requests from your new domain (e.g. www.me123.com) to your server or hosting account (e.g. www.freelargehosting.com/me123).
2. Download the .htaccess file from your hosting account using ftp.
3. Open the downloaded .htaccess file with a plain text editor. Gedit or VI for Linux, Notepad for Windows.
4. Add the following lines of code to the top:
   
   RewriteEngine on
   Options +FollowSymlinks
   RewriteBase /
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.me123.*
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/me123/
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subdir$1
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^me123.*
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/me123/
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /me123/$1
5. Save the file.
6. Upload the .htaccess file to your hosting account. When prompted to replace the file, click “Yes”.
7. Go to your website and you should have all of your requests re-written to www.freelargehosting.com/me123.

Tips & Warnings

• This is particularly useful in instances where you don’t want or need to create custom content, but want all users making requests to your domains to be pointed to your main website.
• You can also rewrite the URL displayed in the address bar to reflect the new domain address. This works great for instances where you’re “phasing out” an old domain. To do this, add this code to your .htaccess as well: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?me123\.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.
• )$ http://www.freelargehosting.com/me123/$1 [R=301,L]
• Make sure to spell everything correctly. The last thing you want is for requests to your domain to go to a “404 – Page not found” error. Or worse, someone else’s web page.
• Remember that your hosting account needs to support user editing of .htaccess. If it does not, contact your hosting administrator.