Domain Masking & WordPress?

  • Hello,

    I am trying to set up domain masking for a site built with WP. (I’m not a web developer, so forgive me…) What I want to do is this:

    Right now, my WP blog is hosted at https://www.domain1.com. I have https://www.domain2.com “parked” so that when someone types that URL in, they’ll be redirected to https://www.domain1.com. Under normal circumstances (i.e. when not using WP) https://www.domain2.com would show up in the browser bar… pretty straight-forward.

    HOWEVER…

    When using WP, the browser bar changes automatically to https://www.domain1.com, and I need it to show up as https://www.domain2.com (when that particular URL is typed in – due to google adwords consequences). I spoke to my hosting service (Bluehost) and they said there’s nothing on their end that they can do to facilitate the change, and that I’d have to do it in wordpress…

    Does anyone know how I can do this? Ideally, I would like make this work for a number of domain URLS (domain3.com, domain4.com, etc.) that are “parked” at https://www.domain1.com.

    Thanks so much for all your help!

    Ryan

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • The WordPress canonical URL functionality is designed to prevent exactly this sort of thing, because it will count against your search engine results due to duplicate content.

    However.

    <?php
/*
Plugin Name: Disable Canonical URL Redirection
Description: Disables the "Canonical URL Redirect" features of WordPress 2.3 and above.
Version: 1.0
Author: Mark Jaquith
Author URI: https://markjaquith.com/
*/ 

remove_filter('template_redirect', 'redirect_canonical'); 

?>

    I think that will still work as a plugin.

    I’m not sure the best answer to the original question, but I’ve had to do this before, and for me the way I got it to work was: set up the masking domain, upload the WP files to the folder / directory of your masked domain (the address you want WP to appear at), and actually run the installer FROM the masked domain URL. If you install WP and run the installer on the “original” domain, and then set up masking, you get the problem described in Post #1.

    In your case run the install script from
    www.domain2.com/wp-admin/install.php

    Addendum, for conversation sake:

    The “duplicate content” penalty is highly over-rated. The penalty is small, and appears to be only applied by Google when Google believes you are trying to be spammy. If they discover innocent, bloggish duplicate content, they do not seem to care (my experience & from reading Google’s recommendations). You can repost your same articles on your homepage, Category archives, Single Post page, your Feed, your Feedburner, and copy it over to a Myspace blog, Facebook, and Live Journal. Google won’t penalize your original site then (again, in my experience).

    The “duplicate content” penalty is highly over-rated. The penalty is small, and appears to be only applied by Google when Google believes you are trying to be spammy

    I agree with that observation 1000%. Ive never gone out of my way to avoid duplicate content, dont restrict spidering of anything thats post related, and have never seen fallout.

    That said — Im not duplicating content across multiple urls though, and thats an entirely different thing.

    google is smart enough to realize that porn sites, mortgage lender sites, “health” (term used loosely) sites, etc.. have a spam characteristic to them from the get go — not to mention any dashed keyword domain like keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.info ..

    ugh.

    Thread Starter ryanbgood

    (@ryanbgood)

    Mrmist – AWESOME! Thanks so much. Does exactly what I needed it to do.

    Thanks everyone for the quick, helpful replies, what a solid community!

    -Ryan

    Just out of curiosity, would the above method with a parked domain be better than a standard mask? I really don’t care about search engine rankings as I am not doing anything business oriented, but I do have another blog which I have masked with an index.html file holding the standard html masking code:

    <html>
<head>
<title>My Website</title>
<meta name="description" content="My website description" />
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2" />
</head>
<frameset rows="100%,0" border="0">
  <frame src="https://www.domain.com" frameborder="0">
  <frame frameborder="0">
</frameset>
</html>

    It seems to me that the above mentioned method may be a little more search-engine happy than standard masking. I’m just wondering what others think about it.

    I don’t really know with regards to SEO as I don’t care that much about it. But frames are horrible ??

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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