Domain redirecting and URL forwarding with a simple DNS record

DNS itself won’t redirect the path portion of a URL.

Adding

www.proof.com  IN  CNAME  www.proof-two.com

will direct access to www.proof.com to www.proof-two.com, where you will need to use web server config to direct users to the appropriate page.

If your website is hosted on platform like GitHub Pages, Tumblr or Blogger you won’t be able to redirect specific path or subdomain through server side.

Since, here’s the following sites which helps you to simply redirect using ALIAS, ANAME, CNAME or TXT record:

• redirect.center
• redirect.name

Using redirect.center

You just have to do is to point a domain to redirect.center server and redirect.center will perform a DNS lookup and redirect the user to your specified destination.

Redirect subdomains

Specify the destination domain as a subdomain of example.com. A simple subdomain redirect of google.example.com to google.com:

google.example.com  IN  CNAME  google.com.redirect.center

If you want to redirect any unmatched subdomains to your main domain or another domain then you can also enter wildcard record (*):

*.example.com  IN  CNAME  example.com.redirect.center

*.example.com  IN  CNAME  domain2.com.redirect.center

Options to redirect

Options can be specified as part of a CNAME.

For example to redirect www.oldwebsite.com to www.newwebsite.com with a 302 status code:

www.oldwebsite.com  IN  CNAME  www.newwebsite.com.opts-statuscode-302.redirect.center

For example to redirect with a path. If a user try to visit www.oldwebsite.com/about/ will redirect to path www.newwebsite.com/about/:

www.oldwebsite.com  IN  CNAME  www.newwebsite.com.opts-uri.redirect.center

redirect.center provides options to allow for the flexibility most situations will need.

Redirect main domain

A root domain (eg: example.com) cannot be a CNAME, a workaround for this is supported: point the A record for the root domain to the redirect.center server (54.84.55.102) and then create a CNAME matching the root domain (using CNAME or TXT options as described above).

For example to redirect example.com to www.example.com:

example.com           IN  A      54.84.55.102
redirect.example.com  IN  CNAME  www.example.com.redirect.center

To redirect example.com to domain2.com:

example.com           IN  A      54.84.55.102
redirect.example.com  IN  CNAME  domain2.com.redirect.center

You can find updated usage instructions and examples here: redirect.center.

Using redirect.name

Everything is configured by DNS. Just point your domain to the service alias.redirect.name, add a DNS record to configure your redirect(s), and you’re good to go.

Redirect subdomains

Specify the destination domain as a subdomain of example.com. A simple subdomain redirect of google.example.com to google.com:

google.example.com            IN  CNAME  alias.redirect.name
_redirect.google.example.com  IN  TXT    Redirects to https://www.google.com

Options to redirect

Wildcard matches (*) are also supported by redirect.name. Any unmatched paths will redirect to specfic page, so it’s recommended that you add a wildcard catch-all path when redirecting specific paths.

google.example.com            IN  CNAME  alias.redirect.name
_redirect.google.example.com  IN  TXT    Redirects from /* to https://www.google.com/*

Your TXT record value should have a human-readable format format like one of the following:

• Redirects to [target], where target is the target URL
• Redirects from [path] to [target], where path is a path to match on the hostname
• Redirects permanently to [target], where permanently redirects with a 301 status code (defaults to 302 otherwise)

Redirect main domain

For apex/naked domains, it is recommended that you use an ALIAS or ANAME record type if your DNS provider supports it. Otherwise, use a plain A record, keeping in mind that the IP address may change (or more may be added).

For example to redirect example.com to www.example.com:

example.com.           IN  A    45.55.72.95
_redirect.example.com  IN  TXT  Redirects to http://www.example.com

To redirect example.com to domain2.com:

example.com.           IN  A    45.55.72.95
_redirect.example.com  IN  TXT  Redirects to http://domain2.com

You can find updated usage instructions and examples here: redirect.name.

Other alternatives

A service that does similar to this is EasyRedir. There are certainly other options out there though, so I encourage you to have a look around.