Options for different domain and hosting
- by Carl
The situation
I have a hosting service (one.com) on which I have installed a wordpress.org site in a subdirectory 'wordpress':
myhost.com/wordpress/
(myhost.com is actually my own domain, but it already has contents and I don't want wordpress/ to appear in the root of that domain.)
I want to use a second domain for this site. Thinking I would be able to forward to the wordpress site without problems, I registered the domain at GoDaddy.com:
mydomain.com
What I want
So when my visitors type in mydomaind.com, I want them to see the contents on myhost.com/wordpress/, and the same for all subpages (mydomain.com/a/subpage fetches from myhost.com/wordpress/a/subpage).
Just a redirect isn't enough, I want my visitors to see only mydomain.com as their domain.
Some notes
If I set up forward with URL masking at GoDaddy, they just give a full frame, pointing to myhost.com/wordpress/. This isn't good enough for me, since mydomain.com will always show up in the adress bar, also for subpages (I want mydomain/a/subpage to show in the adress bar for a subpage).
I believe this could in principle be done with a .htaccess file with URL rewriting, but I have no hosting with GoDaddy so I can't upload such a file there. Hosting with GoDaddy is very expensive (of course) so I don't want to do that.
I don't think I can use DNS settings; the host of mydomain.com says they don't allow anyone else to point to their name servers.
If possible, I wouldn't want to re-install the wordpress site, it would take quite some time. I'd prefer to keep it at myhost.com/wordpress/ (if possible)
Anything involving transferring the domain is supposed to take 5-7 working days. I would need my site up-and-running earlier than that, so I'd like to avoid it if possible.
Am I locked in?
As it seems, I am rather locked-in with GoDaddy. I can't use the domain with .htaccess since I can't upload such a file (and won't pay for hosting by GoDaddy). I can't use any of their forward options since none of them do what I want (one just forwards, the one that masks the URL does it with frames).
Would you agree?
Possible solutions
Transfer the domain to any hosting service with reasonable hosting pricing, as opposed to GoDaddy (I'd probably use one.com, the same host as for myhost.com, in that case), and there either
re-install wordpress on the new account, or
use .htaccess with URL rewrite on the new account to fetch the contents from myhost.com/wordpress/. Can this be set-up to work with sub-pages as well? And visitors won't ever see "myhost.com/wordpress", just "mydomain.com"? E.i., mydomain.com/a/subpage/ wold fetch from myhost.com/wordpress/a/subpage/?
This might be a long shot but:
Find some free (preferrably) hosting allowing to point to their nameservers
Make DNS settings at GoDaddy so that my domain appears at the site above
at that site, put a .htaccess file with URL rewriting to forward to myhost.com/wordpress/
Could this be possible? What services could I use in that case? As I see it, this would be the only way not to have to transfer a domain (taking 5-7 working days) and not having to re-install the wordpress site.
Sorry for the long question. All info and ideas are welcome.
