Hover 101
Tips for using www.hover.com
Domain Forwarding
Domain forwarding allows you to redirect a registered domain name to any existing website. For example, you may want to have your domain redirected to a website you have hosted at another address, or you may want to redirect your domain to a social networking website such as Facebook, a family photo album posted on flickr, etc. This tutorial will teach you how to configure domain forwarding in Hover.
To begin, log into your Hover account online at: https://www.hover.com/login
Select the List of Domains tab then click on the domain name that needs to be forwarded.
Check Your Name Servers
Select the Manage Domain tab.
The domain name needs to be pointed at Hover's name servers in order for our servers to handle the domain redirection.
1. If you have a registered domain name, such as awesomesnowremoval.net, your name servers need to be pointed at the following:
ns1.hover.com
ns2.hover.com
ns3.hover.com (optional third name server)
Detailed steps for changing your name servers are posted at this URL: http://about.hover.com/changeNS
2. If you are configuring forwarding for a Personal Domain (such as tufty.brown.net in the example above), then click on Manage DNS and click Revert to default if you are not already using our default DNS data.
Please note that any changes to name servers may take up to 48 hours to propagate to your Internet Service Provider. Your domain forwarding will starting working after DNS propagation.
Configure Domain Forwarding
Select the Manage Forwards tab then click on the plus next to Hover Preferences.
Edit Hover Preferences
The Hover Preferences section has up to six options that you can configure:
1. My home page should: You can select the Forward to another website option or Display my hovers.
If you select Display my hovers, your domain or sub-domain will load a list of forwards that you have created for your domain. If you select Forward to another website you will be given additional options for configuring domain forwarding for your base domain name, outlined in numbers 2-6 below.
2. Forward to: Type the destination address that you want your domain name redirected to in the Forward to: text box. In the example pictured above, awesomesnowremoval.com is being configured to redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow.
3. Enable stealth redirection: Checking this feature causes your domain name to remain in the address bar of the web browser after the destination website is loaded.
Please note that stealth redirection may not work for all websites. In order to enable stealth, we need to load the destination website in a separate frame. Some websites will not allow this. For example, stealth redirection cannot be used if you are forwarding your domain name to a YouTube video. The YouTube website will not allow us to load pages within our stealth frame.
4. Page Title: When stealth redirection is being used, the page title
5. Page Description: Your page description should provide a concise explanation of a Web page's content. The description contents are used by major search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The description is often, but not always, displayed on search engine results pages.
6. Page Keywords: Your page keywords are used by major search engines to identify websites that should be scanned for indexing. You should enter keywords that match content on your website for the bext results.
Click Save after you have set your preferred options.
Confirmation
A confirmation is displayed to let you know that your forwarding preferences have been updated.
As pictured above, with stealth redirection enabled the domain name remained in the address bar after loading the website and the custom title, "Snow is Wonderful," is also displayed.
Additional Hover Forwards Will Continue to Work Separately
The example above demonstrates that a Hover shortcut called "SnowiestPlaces" will redirect http://awesomesnowremoval.com/SnowiestPlaces to another website even after configuring the root domain, awesomesnowremoval.com, to redirect to the Wikipedia page.
The Hover domain forwarding services allow you to redirect one domain name to many different websites. More information on how to configure additional url forwards can be found at this URL: http://about.hover.com/hovers
__________________________________________________________
Join us on Facebook: http://about.hover.com/facebook
__________________________________________________________
Article Shortcut: http://about.hover.com/urlforwarding
__________________________________________________________
| Next: Create Additional Forwards |
Sidebar
Comments
Tweet
Comments (10)
How long does it take for the site to be forwarded?
Great question Ashley! The answer depends on whether you have made changes to your name servers. If your name servers were already pointed to Hover, domain forwarding should start immediately. However, if you have to change your name servers to Hover, it may be 24-48 hours before your Internet Provider sees the name server update after which your forwarding will work.
How many 'hovers'are we allowed to have on one domain (that is if we use for example: help.mydomain.com)
Thanks.
Thanks for the question Ricardo. Free Hover accounts are allowed up to 5 Hovers. All paid accounts have an unlimited number of Hovers. If you have paid for "mydomain.com" then you can create an unlimited number of Hovers for that domain.
Where is the information formerly shown on Domain Direct about number of hits received at the web site?
That hit count info is important to me.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment Scott.
The Hover system does not provide forwarding statistics. You might consider using a free service such as Google Analytics to create and access logs of forwarding and traffic statistics for your website.
You can sign up for Google Analytics online at: http://www.google.com/analytics/
During the sign up process Google will provide you with HTML code to add to your website so that your hit count statistics are logged in your Google Analytics account.
With stealth redirection, can you forward to a URL that has a slash in it (like homepage.mac.com/username/mystuff)? If so, will it maintain the right structure even when you click around on the new site? In other words will it always mask out the above path even as I click around on the forwarded site?
Great question Sam.
Our domain forwarding and stealth redirection services fully support file and directory level forwards. For example, if you go to http://awesomelawncare.com/tips the Hover redirect will take you to a YouTube video with stealth enabled. If you click on other videos or links within YouTube the URL still remains http://awesomelawncare.com/tips.
There are a few exceptions to the rule. Some secure websites, such as banking sites, may break the frame we use for stealth redirection and reveal the actual URL.
What type of redirection is performed w/ Hovers and/or domain forwarding? 301?
Thanks.
@Eric - All domain forwarding in the Hover system is done using a 302 temporary redirect.
Add your comment