OK, this is a bit of a brainteaser..hopefully you guys can help me ......
Domain name registry: standard scenario...you go along to your domain name registry service...-.com or whatever (e.g. with www.netsol.com, someone like that) and you register your preferred URL www.exampleaddress.com with them. They basically take this URL and configure it using DNS such that it points at a fixed IP address of some web server somewhere. OK......here's where it gets a bit interesting....you decide you what www.exampleaddress.com/samplefolder (i.e. exactly the same top level domain name) to point at the root folder of a DIFFERENT web server...now folks, not sure if this is possible (you tell me - please) but I'm not talking about putting a URL redirect text file in the 'samplefolder' of the first server (which naturally can be done and will point at whatever other server you want) but I'm looking for www.exampleadress.com/samplefolder to actually appear in address bar of web browser even though user is looking at another server (not the original one) - hope I'm not explaining this too badly!!!! in other words, we all know that we can have multiple URLs point at a given web server...my question is, can we have one URL point at more than 1 web server (e.g. 2)...you may say that's impossible..that the whole point of DNS..one URL to one IP address but if we help the registry service a bit, can it be done...in other words can we register (these are only made up URLs by the way) www.madquestion.com to point at one server and www.madquestion.com/somewebpage.htm to point at a different server.........or does that contradict everything we ever learned about DNS etc.???? Appreciate any light you lot can shed!!!!!

PS a simple URL redirect on the first server to the second server will do grand (real URL of second server appears in address bar once it links in) if you can't help me with this one...don't want to twist those brains out of shape.

i guess no.

There are only two ways I can think of to do that.

One would be a simple frames page solution. Would do what you want in a bit of a rough way, but not very elegant, or a real solution.

The second would be to host some sort of server side script (e.g. PHP) on server 1. Then you could use mod_rewrite to rewrite the URL to the script, which would then load the other site server-side and output it in the script on server 1. This would mean that server 1's domain would always remain in the address bar, but the content would be served from server 2. The problem is, of course, it is very bandwidth intensive.

URL cloaking? if you can get a cloaking script, then maybe www.whatever.com/somepage will redirect to another server but still show that URL in the address bar, if that is waht you want.

if not then i guess you could just get subdomains and cloak them

Usually, the url points to the home page (index page, default page, whatever you want to call it).

So, http://www.example.com = http://www.example.com/home.html. Then http://www.example.com/whatever.html could be a redirect pointing to any page somewhere else.

Hmm, but now thinking about it, I'm not sure.

Dave

After a bit of research myself, domain name cloaking would certainly seem to be the solution. There are a no. of domain name registry services that offer it. For example, Registersite.com offer it as part of their very reasonably priced $35 'Premium' service....Q: anyone actually heard of, worked with this co. before...can you vouch for their credibility/professionalism etc. They certainly seemed alright to me...responded to my email query in under 4 hours and basically can provide me with the necessary solution...other domain names reg's just don't seem able to offer domain name cloaking, they just to URL forwarding e.g. NetSol don't seem to do it although after phoning them etc. they probably will be able to but only after a lot of fuss.........
Can anyone vouch for www.registersite.com as good folks to work with.......??????? Really appreciate any feedback in this regard.