Web Forwarding directly with Nominet

[woopwoop]

At the moment with my .coms/.gtlds I log in to the registrar, set up the domain to forward traffic to parkingdomain.com/index.php?id=actualdomainforwarded.com

The index.php page at parkingdomain.com uses a $_GET to pull the variable and produce a custom ______ domain is for sale, contact if interested page.

This has been an efficient way of registering/transferring a domain, set the redirect and then attracting offers as it resolves to a basic for sale page in minutes.

Does anyone know if this is possible for my .co.uks through Nominet? (I'm a member/registrar so there is no middle registrar that might have such a service)

I'm assuming that the NS would have to point to Nom's servers for them to forward the domain, but maybe they don't have this type of forwarding service. Perhaps only provided by registrars?

I'm trying to avoid creating addon domains, and 301 redirects for holding pages when the domain is just on a for sale pile - too much time...

Thanks for any suggestions/clarity...

 

[Skinner]

Wildcard DNS would be your best option.

 

[woopwoop]

Thanks - I took a quick look and I remembered I should sleep!! 4am here and

I've been working solid for a few days to move websites over to new hosting packages...

At the moment with .com's/gtlds the workflow is so quick, from reg to forward everything is set up in less than a minute and after the name resolves a custom sales page is shown. Thanks for the rec I'll check it out tomorrow.

Moving websites is more mentally draining than moving home. I've moved over 4 hosting packages to 3, which collectively included 40 websites.

A few takeaways for anyone reading this:
1. don't forget the .htaccess file
2. make backups of your backups
3. if you need to replace words/phrases across many (hundreds?) of files (e.g. database passwords/usernames etc. if you have a site without a single config file include) then TextWrangler's multifile search and replace is awesome. This video helps.

Goodnight/good morning!

 

[Skinner]

For the replaces, if you have root access, grep is your best buddy, all performed on the server at lightening speed.

If you use wildcard DNS, all you need to do is change the dns to your nameservers, and the rest is done via your existing get command. a little php and you can use EPP to do the reg, and add name servers in split seconds, so even quicker than .com.

 

[ian]

Couldn't Nominet offer an option to allow setup of nameservers for auto-forwarding to hosting etc? As a tag holder, I get really annoyed having to use a third party registrar for those domains that I have active websites on, or require email forwarding.

 

[diablo]

Thanks - I took a quick look and I remembered I should sleep!! 4am here and

I've been working solid for a few days to move websites over to new hosting packages...

At the moment with .com's/gtlds the workflow is so quick, from reg to forward everything is set up in less than a minute and after the name resolves a custom sales page is shown. Thanks for the rec I'll check it out tomorrow.

Moving websites is more mentally draining than moving home. I've moved over 4 hosting packages to 3, which collectively included 40 websites.

A few takeaways for anyone reading this:
1. don't forget the .htaccess file
2. make backups of your backups
3. if you need to replace words/phrases across many (hundreds?) of files (e.g. database passwords/usernames etc. if you have a site without a single config file include) then TextWrangler's multifile search and replace is awesome. This video helps.

Goodnight/good morning!

Will be moving hosting myself shortly so thanks for these tips!

 

[ian]

I original post was incorrectly worded, but to remove the need for any third party registrars, whilst still allowing certain domains to web and email-forward, I'd essentially need to set myself up a nameserver I control? I was going to say that surely it adds an additional potential risk through failure/downtime, but I guess that is no different than using third party registrars. If anyone is using such a method to avoid having to house some domains through third parties, then let me know suggestions.

Of course I didn't mean changing nameservers for hosting, because that is already possible, I just meant to auto-forward or add DNS options in etc.

 

[ian]

I'm possibly missing the point here, but isn't there any existing providers out there offering you the ability to point your domains to them and setting up auto-forwarding on their system, without the need to have the domains with their tag? Obviously they won't make anything from renewals, but could charge for DNS services. I have some domains that use subdomains for IP forwarding and email-forwarding only, no front end website etc.

 

[ian]

Hopefully I haven't taken this thread too much off track, but in response, the number of domains is minimal, so setting up my own solution isn't really worth my time; but paying a service £5/month would be acceptable. So for example, I have one domain with no web presence, but does utilise MX records to forward domain based emails to another email address, as well as DNS record changes to route customers to certain IP based services. If I had a means of retaining this, but having the domain on my TAG so that I can pay for the renewals through Nominet instead of Daily (in this instance), that would be useful and I'd then be able to do the same with the rest.

 

[RobM]

I used to run a service doing exactly this with customisable parking pages, stats, etc for a lot less than $5 per domain per month. I had one customer. Others moaned it was too expensive. If there is a demand I might revive it.

 

[Adam H]

For bulk domain name parking of .uk domain names a $5 Digital Ocean cloud instance with name server software configured, web server software and Google Analytics reporting should more than cope. I don't imagine many "domain investors" will want to pay a fee per domain name for those sort of services when a one off fee and $5 a month would suffice for effectively unlimited domain names. Far too tight for that! Nominet don't even mandate at least two name servers so one cloud instance would be fine.

Even if it is only domain parking id still recommend doing more than 1 or 2 nameservers.

A webserver with WHM licence and have a small DNS cluster of 2 - 5 DNS only servers in various locations would be a nice little setup with next to no maintenance.

DNS-only runs on any machine with 1GB of Ram, so you can pick up some reasonably priced VPS's in locations across the world for a reasonable price providing there isnt huge traffic being used on them.

 

[woopwoop]

Haven't yet fully looked into skinner's suggestion, but that looks hopeful.

Before it was needed, I took web forwarding for granted through moniker.com for my .coms etc.

I'm realizing I know less about the internet and DNS than I thought! Thanks for the tips...