Redirecting a website using Forwarding or an A Record

This article explains how to redirect an entire website to another website.

These instructions apply only to Cruzio Website Hosting services. If you have Cruzio’s Classic hosting, contact Cruzio to request a change to your A Record, or use a .htaccess redirect instead.

See Cruzio’s redirect overview to decide which redirect method you should use.

Please proceed with caution. If you make mistakes, your website may become unreachable.

Two methods; which should you choose?

If you have an extra domain and you simply want to point it to an existing website, then Standard or Frame Forwarding is the easiest way to do that.

Maybe you need to temporarily redirect a domain that already has a website on it, without destroying those website files. In this case, you may modify your A Record if you can. However, please note the limitations of this method in the A Record section below. You may want to use the .htaccess method instead, as it works in cases where an A Record will not.

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Redirecting with Standard or Frame Forwarding

To redirect a domain name to a website hosted on another domain:

  1. Login to your domain control panel at http://login.cruzio.com.
  2. In your Control Panel, look under Main Menu for the Domains section of your Home page. If you are on Host 6 or above, you will need to first click “Domains” under the Main Menu in the upper left hand corner. If the domain you want to redirect was previously set up for hosting, you will need to remove it. Back up any site files you want to keep, then remove that domain.

    If you do not know what Host number you are on, after you log into your control panel, look at the URL at the top of your browser. You will see it start with ‘https://host’ followed by a number. That is the Host number you are on.

  3. If you are on Host 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, click the “Add New Domain” icon in the Tools section. Type in the domain name that you want to redirect. Leave the “www” check box selected. Leave the “Create domain without template” option selected. Make sure “Proceed to hosting setup” is checked. Click “OK”.

    If you are on Host 6 or above, click the “Create Domain icon” in the Tools section. Type in the domain name that you want to redirect. Leave the “www” check box selected. Change “Use domain template settings” to “Default Domain”.

  4. For Host 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, choose either “Standard forwarding” or “Frame forwarding”, then click “OK”.

    For Host 6 or above, select “Forwarding” under Hosting Type. Then under “Forwarding Settings”, choose either “Standard forwarding” or “Frame forwarding”.

    With standard forwarding, a visitor is redirected to the site and the actual site’s URL is shown in the visitor’s browser, so the visitor always knows they were redirected to another URL.

    With frame forwarding, a visitor is redirected to the site without knowing that the site actually resides at another location.

  5. Specify the Destination URL: the website address that you would like this domain to point to. Click “OK” or “Finish”.
  6. To test the forwarding, enter the address of the forwarded domain into the address bar of your web browser. Your browser should take you to the destination URL.

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Redirecting with an A Record

Using an A Record as a method to redirect a website has serious limitations. Rather than redirecting to a different website, per se, you are redirecting to an IP address. If more than one website is at that IP address, you cannot control which website the redirect will go to.

To see which website a particular IP address will go to, simply enter that IP address in your browser’s address bar.

To redirect a website to another IP address:

  1. Login to your domain control panel at http://login.cruzio.com.
  2. On your Home page, click on the domain name of the website you would like to redirect. If you are on Host 6 or above, this can be accessed by first clicking “Domains” under the Main Menu in the upper left hand corner.
  3. For Host 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, click “DNS Settings” under the Services section.

    For Host 6 or above, click “DNS Settings” under the Web Site section.

  4. There should be, among the other A records, an A record of the form: 
    Host		Record Type	Value
yourdomain.com	A		IP.address

    Where:

    • yourdomain.com is the name of your domain; and
    • IP.address is the IP address of the domain.
  5. Click the host name in this record.

    Leave the “Record type” menu set to “A”.

    Leave the box labeled “Enter domain name” blank.

    In the box labeled “Enter IP address *”, enter the IP address you are redirecting to.

    Click “OK”.

Note: Your new A record will take up to 24–48 hours to take effect. This is because a new A record is a DNS change, and all DNS servers worldwide need to be updated to reflect the change. To test whether the A Record has taken effect, enter the address of the redirected domain into the address bar of your web browser. If the record has taken effect, your browser will take you to the website at the destination IP address.

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