URL Forwarding: A Simple Way to Obtain Free Web/Blog Hosting Using Your Own Domain Name
by: Marco Rinaudo
URL forwarding is a very powerful, almost magical, feature that enables your domain name to be transparently redirected to any free web/blog hosting service of your choice. This means, that visitors to your site only see your domain name professionally shown in the URL rather than the long computerized URL name automatically generated by the free hosting site software.
For example:
Before using URL Forwarding, your web/blog URL may look like this-
www.freewebostingservices.org/freecustomer/mypages01/index.html
Once you have URL Forwarding in place however, your same web/blog URL will look like this-
www.mydomain.com
The basic idea behind this feature is to simply register a domain with a domain name registrar offering URL forwarding services, possibly for free, and then configure it to point to your free web or blog hosting space. You will find details on how to do so on the domain registrar website; although each registrar may have its own system to handle the procedure, the final result will be the same - your website or blog URL will appear to be hosted directly under your own domain name.
Note that proper URL forwarding is fully handled by the domain name registrar and is completely transparent for you and for your visitors. The average visitor and often the professional one will not be able to tell if your domain is using URL forwarding. An added benefit of using URL forwarding is that you will also be able to include your own metatags, keywords and title with your domain name before forwarding it; these increase your search engine visibility, boosting your site position towards the top.
If you are planning to register a domain name, and want the site to look as professional as possible, then using the URL forwarding (also known as web forwarding) feature offered by your domain registrar will make your website URL one that's easy for visitors to remember, and return too!