Domain masking or URL masking is the act of hiding the actual
domain name of a
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...
from the
URL
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...
field of a
user
Ancient Egyptian roles
* User (ancient Egyptian official), an ancient Egyptian nomarch (governor) of the Eighth Dynasty
* Useramen, an ancient Egyptian vizier also called "User"
Other uses
* User (computing), a person (or software) using an ...
's
web browser
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
in favor of another name. There are many ways to do this, including the following examples.
#
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
inline frame or
frameset so a frame embedded in the main website actually points to some other site.
#
URL rewriting (e.g., mod_rewrite) or
alias
Alias may refer to:
* Pseudonym
* Pen name
* Nickname
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Alias'' (2013 film), a 2013 Canadian documentary film
* ''Alias'' (TV series), an American action thriller series 2001–2006
* ''Alias the ...
es to have the
web server
A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initiate ...
serve the same page for two different
domain names.
Once the URL is masked it displays the URL mask rather than the original URL/domain name. Masking does not affect the content of the actual website; it only covers up the original URL/domain name. Domain masking prevents users from being able to see the actual domain website, whether it be due to length or privacy/security issues.
"Forwarding or Masking Your Domain"
GoDaddy.com. 2013-12-10.
See also
*Website spoofing
Website spoofing is the act of creating a website with the intention of misleading readers that the website has been created by a different person or organization. Normally, the spoof website will adopt the design of the target website, and it som ...
* URL shortening
* URL redirection
References
Web design
{{Compu-domain-stub