How do I redirect/forward through my page?

[anthonyrude]

I would like to set up a page on my site used only to redirect or forward to another website.

for example i see websites that use a page on there site to go to another.

mysite.com/othersite

This may be done to mask the url or shorten it but sometimes you will see a different link when you mouseover, like an affiliate link.

Sometimes you don't see the affiliate link you only see mysite.com/othersite
when moused over.

I would like to learn how they do this and when you get to the target page sometimes you will see the "real" affiliate link and sometimes you only see the original site like... othersite.com

I've read about 301 redirects and seen services like aweber where the site owner uses page and links in emails with a subdomain like

mysite.aweber.com

I'm new to all of this and don't even know if this is the right forum I'm posting this in.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give to a newbie.

thx,

-Tony

[ryanbutler]

You're getting URL re-writting and page re-direction mixed up. URL re-writing is a concept where you take a long URL and re-write it behind the scenes to point to another folder.

Actually re-directing your page(s) to another page automatically or setting up sub domains is trivial. Re-directing to another page automatically is done through a <meta tag or through server-side code. Sub domains is done through your server setup.

[anthonyrude]

I don't understand what you are saying. What's trivial? Why? I'm asking how to do it because I obviously don't know.

When you say "it's done through a <meta tag or through server-side code."

How is that helping me?

Do you know how to set up the meta tags to do this?

Do you know what the server-side code is to accomplish this?

If so, I would love to hear it.

Yes sub-domains are set up on the servers from which the page is being hosted. I would like to know how to do this.

I've seen it done with a page mysite.com/theotherpage
and I've seen it done with subdomains mysite.theothersite.com

I'm not confusing them I'm asking how to do it and what people here recommend.

thx,

-Tony

[kiwibrit]

Hmm. If you want the re-direct to be permanent, the best way is a 301 re-direct, which you say you have already read about. How you do that depends on what sort of web server your web hosts uses. If it is for an Apcache server on a Linux host, then Google 301 redirect .htaccess. If you are using windows server, then you may have to ask the web host support staff to do it for you, unless your control panel allows you to do it yourself.

You could use a meta tag

<META http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.example.com/index.html">
but I think that may have search engine implications.