Frequently Asked Questions

The NearlyFreeSpeech.NET FAQ (*)

Customization (*)

What canonical name redirection settings are available?

How do I enable directory indexes for my site?

How do I create a website for the sole purpose of forwarding visitors to another website?

Here are the step-by-step instructions:

  1. Create the forwarding site. If you are going to forward to www.example.com or your-site.some-other-web-host.com, try to give it a short name like examplefwd.
  2. Set up the name you want to forward from as an alias of the examplefwd site.
  3. Create a one-line plain text file on your local computer called htaccess.txt containing the following (replacing www.example.com with the name of the site you want to forward to):

    RedirectPermanent / http://www.example.com/

    or (if appropriate)

    RedirectPermanent / http://www.example.com/your/custom/path/

  4. Upload this htaccess.txt file to your examplefwd site hosted here as a text file.
  5. Rename the file from htaccess.txt to .htaccess. (That's "htaccess" with a period in front.)

This approach works for all sorts of URLs, not just the main site. For example, if you use this technique to forward members.example.com visitors to www.example.com/members/ and someone visits http://members.example.com/page.html they will be forwarded to http://www.example.com/members/page.html.

Please note if the target site is hosted here and you merely want to redirect alternative names, setting a hard canonical name is usually faster, easier, and cheaper than this approach. This approach is better suited when the redirection involves two hosts or path manipulation at either or both ends.

When should the rewrite log be used?

How do I change the text displayed for missing pages and other errors?

What should my site's canonical name be?

What is a per-alias document root?

What path should I use for .htpasswd files?

How do I restrict which IP addresses can access my site?

How do I control redirection of HTTP visitors to HTTPS?

Can I set up more than one alias for my site?

How do I make my site fast and scalable?

What is a run script?

How do I change the server type my site uses?

How do I set up a custom server process?