Domain forwarding: pointing one domain at another

Domain forwarding sends anyone who types one domain to a different one, so an old business name or a common misspelling still lands on your real website. You set it up in a few minutes at the registrar or DNS company that holds the second domain. Do it right and nobody notices the jump. Do it carelessly and the forwarded address shows a security warning, drops visitors on the home page instead of the page they wanted, or quietly stops working when the main site moves.

What forwarding is, and what it is not

Forwarding is a redirect: a visitor's browser asks for oldname.com, and the server answers "that has moved, go to newname.com". The browser follows, and the address bar shows the new domain.

Forwarding is not:

• A second copy of your website. Nothing is stored on the forwarded domain.
• Email forwarding. Pointing a domain's website at another does nothing for mail sent to that domain. That is set up separately.
• Pointing your domain at a new website. That is done with DNS records on your main domain, explained in connecting your domain to a new website.

The choices you will be asked to make

Most registrars show the same three or four options. Here is what each one means.

Permanent (301) or temporary (302)

• 301, permanent. Tells browsers and search engines the move is for good. Use this for an old name, a misspelling or a second domain you will keep forwarding. Search engines then treat your main domain as the real one.
• 302, temporary. For short-term moves, like a domain pointed at a holiday promotion page for a month. Rarely the right choice for a business domain.

Forward only, or forward with masking

• Forward only (sometimes "redirect") sends the visitor to the main domain, and the address bar shows it. Choose this.
• Forward with masking (or "framed forwarding", "cloaking") shows your main site inside a frame while the address bar keeps showing the second domain. It looks tidy for a moment, but pages often do not work properly on phones, links people copy are wrong, contact forms can break, and search engines may not read the content. Avoid it.

Keep the path or not

Some registrars ask whether to keep the rest of the address. With path forwarding on, oldname.com/menu goes to newname.com/menu. With it off, everything goes to the home page. If the old domain once had its own website with pages people bookmarked, keep the path, and make sure those pages exist on the main site, or set up a redirect for each one there.

The HTTPS problem

When someone types https://oldname.com, their browser expects a security certificate for oldname.com before it will follow any redirect. Some registrar forwarding services provide one automatically; some only work for plain http, which means visitors who type or click an https link to the old domain see a warning page instead of your website.

Test it after you set up forwarding:

1. On your phone, type https:// plus the forwarded domain, and also https://www. plus it.
2. Each should land on your main site with no warning.
3. If you see "Your connection is not private" or similar, the forwarding service is not covering HTTPS. Look in your registrar's forwarding settings for an SSL or HTTPS option, or ask support.

If your registrar cannot do HTTPS forwarding, a common fix is to move the forwarded domain's DNS to a company that handles redirects with certificates, or to have your website host take the second domain and redirect it from there. SSL certificates: do you need to buy one? explains why you should not need to pay for one.

Where to set it up

• At the registrar. Look in the domain's settings for "Forwarding", "Redirect" or "URL forwarding". GoDaddy, Namecheap, Squarespace and most others have it on the domain's main settings page.
• At your DNS company, if the domain's nameservers point elsewhere. Cloudflare, for example, does it through redirect rules.
• At your website host or builder. Many let you add a second domain and mark it as redirecting to the main one, which also takes care of HTTPS.

Use only one of these. If the registrar has forwarding switched on and you also point the domain's DNS at your host, the two settings fight, and results change from day to day.

Do not forget email on the second domain

If the forwarded domain was once your main domain, people may still email addresses on it. Before you change anything:

• Check whether it has MX records (the DNS lines that say where mail goes) and whether those mailboxes are still in use.
• If they are, keep the MX records exactly as they are. Website forwarding and email can coexist on the same domain.
• If you no longer want separate mailboxes there, set up email forwarding from the old addresses to the new ones, and keep it for at least a year.

Turning on a registrar's website forwarding sometimes changes the domain's DNS. Look at the DNS records afterwards and confirm the MX records are still there.

Test it properly

Run through these from your phone, off wifi, and again from a computer:

• oldname.com
• www.oldname.com
• https://oldname.com
• https://www.oldname.com
• oldname.com/ plus the name of an old page, if it had pages

Each one should arrive at the right page on your main site, with the main domain in the address bar and no warning. Send an email to an address at the old domain if you rely on it.

When to stop forwarding

Keep forwarding as long as the old address appears anywhere: on vehicles, signs, old directories, printed menus, receipts or other websites linking to you. For an old business name, that can be many years. Renewing a domain costs far less than losing a customer who typed it.

When you are sure nobody uses it, let it expire at its renewal date. Should you buy several domains for your business? helps you decide which extras are worth keeping.

Your setup in short

1. Decide your main site's exact address (https, with or without www).
2. Set a 301 forward, without masking, at one place only.
3. Turn on path forwarding if the old domain had its own pages.
4. Check MX records are still intact.
5. Test all four versions of the address, with and without https.

If the main site those domains forward to is the part that needs work, you can see your site rebuilt first and point every domain at it once it is ready.