Can I have subdomains appear as their own domain?

Here is today’s question of the day, from my good friend and protégé, Jeff Davis.

Hi Ben,

Is it possible to have a subdomain appear as it’s own
domain?

I tried a redirect, but the url shows up ugly, after the
redirect.

Can I cloak the file path, in the adress bar, AFTER
it redirects?

Best Wishes,
Jeff Davis

Hi Jeff,

Yes you can. The easiest way to do it is with domain name MASKING. Usually when you purchase a domain name they setup domain name forwarding for you. All that means is if I go to www.mydomain.com it forwards to www.mynewdomain.com. The address in the web browser changes and everything.

You can cloak the fact that you are doing a redirect by doing domain name MASKING. This is usually done in a frame. You know framed web pages right? (I know Jeff does, if you don’t a frame basically allows you to see multiple web pages in one window.) Instead of seeing multiple web pages what you see with domain name masking is one big frame. That way the URL never changes so no one knows you redirected the url.

I’m actually using domain name masking on this site: Custom Christmas Cards That isn’t where the site really is. If you right click on that site and view the source you will see that it is really a frame showing you a different site: RememberChristmas.com

Domain name masking is great, unless you’re trying to get your site ranked in the search engines. Some search engines like Google might not like the fact that your site is just a big frame linking to another site. They will actually rank you lower because of it.

If you are linking to a self replicated site it doesn’t matter. Since that site is being copied and used by hundreds or thousands of people it won’t tank well anyway.

But that’s another story