Re: Can a URL point to a URL

Jeff,

Your examples are not URLs, they are domain names. This leaves me unsure if you're asing a question about domain names (and just didn't know what they were called) or if you really meant a URL, but gave oversimplified examples.

A URL would be something like http://www.shortcut.com/path/file.html. It's a single string that explains the protocol used (http in my example, though there are many others, ftp, smtp, etc) the host's domain name (or IP address) and also a path to a file. Some of that, however, can be "defaulted" (i.e. the default document on the site, the default protocol for a given application, etc) which is why I'm not 100% sure what you mean.

If you do really mean a URL, the easiest thing would be to use a URL shortening service like tinyurl.com or bit.ly. You could write your own, of course, it'd likely be a web application that simply redirects.

If you just mean the domain name... DNS has a feature called CNAME which is an alias, so assuming that you controlled DNS for the short name, you could enter a CNAME RR that points to the long name.

Of course, I have no way of knowing if your hosting provider supports it... I run my own DNS servers, so I'm not aware of what various hosting providers allow.

-SK


On 1/17/2018 3:17 PM, Jeff Crosby wrote:

I'm not a network/DNS geek by any stretch, so don't laugh at this
question. Unless you're having a crappy day and this question improves
it. :)


Suppose there's a long URL such as

www.thisisareallylongurlthatnooneeverremembersorwantsto.com

that points to IP 1.2.3.4.

Can one go out to GoDaddy (or whichever service is used) and set up a URL
such as

www.shortcuturl.com

that, instead of pointing directly to IP 1.2.3.4, instead points to

www.thisisareallylongurlthatnooneeverremembersorwantsto.com

so if

www.thisisareallylongurlthatnooneeverremembersorwantsto.com

is ever changed to point to a different IP address, then

www.shortcuturl.com

automatically follows to the new IP address.

Thanks.

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