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Quarryman
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    Posted: February/09/2010 at 4:21pm
I am not a webmaster or server guy by any means, but I have a new lodge website made and ready to go and my lodge has a new domain name registered.  My question is, if I use Mastermason.com to host our site, will the link be "mastermason.com/******.org" or is it possible to just host it as "******.org?"
 
 
JerryP.

PM- Shoreline Lodge#248 F&AM

Shoreline, WA.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote dgresh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February/10/2010 at 6:23am
aogop,
 
When you apply, you will be assigned a user account and web space that will appear as www.mastermason.com/yourlodge.  With a vanity domain name, such as yourlodge.org, you would have the domain point to your web space at www.mastermason.com/yourlodge.
 
Visitors to your web site would simply enter your vanity domain name -- yourlodge.org -- and would be unaware of the underlying web space name.
 
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dgresh


Edited by dgresh - February/10/2010 at 6:25am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote dgresh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February/12/2010 at 6:47am
aogop,
 
I hope that was the answer you were hoping for.
 
You tell the world about yourlodge.org, and you tell your domain name about www.mastermason.com/yourlodge
 
Should you ever decide to move your site from Mastermason.com to another hosting service, you simply re-point your domain name to the new service.
 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote dgresh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February/16/2010 at 10:15am
To All:
 
I continue to get questions on this, so I've put together the following to demonstrate using a vanity domain name with a mastermason.com hosted site.
 
First, I built a simple web site consisting of three pages for demonstration purposes at http://www.mastermason.com/mumblefratz/   (You can click on the link to see what this site looks like.)
 
I then registered a vanity domain name through GoDaddy, but this may be accomplished through other domain services, as well.  The domain name that I selected was mumblefratz.info
 
If you were doing this for your Lodge, you would probably use your lodge name instead of mumblefratz, and you might register a .org domain instead of the .info domain that I am using in this illustration.
 
I then followed the instructions provided by my domain registrar (GoDaddy) for "Forwarding or Masking Your Domain".  These instructions are available at http://help.godaddy.com/article/422?ci=15548
 
Step 6 of these instructions says: "In the Forward to field, enter the URL to which you want your domain to forward."  (See below.)
 
 
Clicking the Advanced Options allowed me to indicated that this was a permanent forward (the default) and to select with Masking.  I could also enter a Title for the web site, a brief Description and a list of Keywords.
 
Then click OK.
 
Quote Note: Forwarded domains can take up to 24~48 hours to become active.
 
With the domain setup, visitors my now access the site by entering http://mumblefratz.info in their browser.  The domain forwards to the mastermason.com site, but the visitor is not aware of this.  You may click the link to try it for yourself.
 
I hope you found this demonstration helpful.
 
---
dgresh


Edited by dgresh - February/16/2010 at 5:23pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote dgresh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February/16/2010 at 10:22am
One last note ...
 
Should I ever decide to move my mumblefratz.info web site to another hosting service, all I would have to do is repeat Step 6 above and enter the new location.  All of the links to my site, and all the visitors, would continue to reference mumblefratz.info
 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote dgresh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February/16/2010 at 6:34pm
For technophiles,
 
mumblefratz.info was my first experience with using "masking" as offered by GoDaddy.  This feature causes the address bar in your browser to display http://mumblefratz.info/ regardless what page you are actually viewing.  By looking only at the address bar, you would not know that you were actually on http://www.mastermason.com/mumblefratz/default.htm, http://www.mastermason.com/mumblefratz/page2.htm or http://www.mastermason.com/mumblefratz/page3.htm.  The address bar continues to display http://mumblefratz.info/ regardless.
 
It appears to me, that this is accomplished using the following technical ruse.
  • The vistor's browser requests a page;
  • when using masking, GoDaddy receives the page request then makes a call for that page to your site on Mastermason.com;
  • Mastermason.com responds with the requested page to GoDaddy;
  • GoDaddy places the resonse in a new page consisting of a single frame containing the Mastermason.com delivered content; and then
  • forwards this framed page to the requesting browser. 
  • The thus constructed framed page always appears to be http://mumblefratz.info/ to the visitor's browser.
 
In my opinion, the only reason to use Masking is to try and hide the underlying hosting service from the site visitor.  The behavior described above at least partially accomplishes that, however, if you mouseover an internal relative link, the Status Bar displays the address as http://www.mastermason.com/mumblefratz/page2.htm, etc. 
 
Oops.
 
The three pages of mumblefratz.info help me illustrate this behavior. 
 
On page 1, the Next> is a relative link to "page2.htm".  On a mouseover, it displays "http://www.mastermason.com/mumblefratz/page2.htm" which is correct but not desired.
 
On page 2, both navigation links are fully qualified URLs, and the full URL displays on a mouseover.  <Previous links to http://www.mastermason.com/mumblefratz/Default.htm which is the home page; Next> links to http://mumblefratz.info/page3.htm. This is how you would like the URL to appear, I believe.
 
On page 3, I placed a "Base" html statement in the Head section and used a relative link to "page2.htm".  On mouseover, this displays "http://mumblefratz.info/page2.htm" as the URL, which is the format desired.  So this may be a possibility.  However, it seemed to break my image link and I had to enter it as a fully qualified URL to make the image display correctly.
 
The HTML source for the "Base" statement that I used on page 3 was as follows.
 
 
Based on this testing, it appears that there are two solutions that will work.
 
1. Change your internal relative links to fully qualified URLs in the form of "http://mumblefratz.info/xxx" where xxx equals your current relative link; or
 
2. Add the Base statement to the Head section on each page (hopefully this doesn't break other internal links, like my image problem).
 
Your choice, but I think I would prefer option #1 if it were me. 
 
 
In my opinion, if you don't really, really need masking, then don't use.  It adds overhead making your site appear to be slower.  It takes extra effort to fully cloak the underlying server, and this effort gets repeated should you ever move your web site.
 
A vanity domain name, like mumblefratz.info, makes it easy for your visitors to access your site.  Do you really care that they know that the underlying hosting service is www.mastermason.com/mumblefratz?

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dgresh
 


Edited by dgresh - February/16/2010 at 6:35pm
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Quarryman
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote aogop Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February/23/2010 at 11:26am
Thanks a ton Smile  Once the lodge approves the site I will upload it.
JerryP.

PM- Shoreline Lodge#248 F&AM

Shoreline, WA.
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