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ShortURL FAQ

If you already have a shortURL address, consult the member FAQ inside the account management area where we provide in-depth answers to common problems and tips for getting the most out of your address.


FAQ on ShortURL SubDomain Features:

How can my site benefit from a shortURL address?

What is Prefix Forwarding (ANYTHING.you.shortURL.com) all about?

What is Prefix Path Forwarding, and how does it work?

What is Path Forwarding, and how does it work?

What is Mirror Management all about?

What is URL masking?

What is frame kill?

Tell me more about shortURL Traffic Reports!

Can I get the email address: [email protected]?

Can I my own domain, myname.com?

Can I forward to a network IP address?

Can you create an MX record for me?

Will you use advertisements on my address?

Subdomain Basic FAQ

I have not yet received my activation email with password!

Will I loose my old URL when I get a shortURL address?

What's the catch, how is this service offered for free?

I've lost my password, what do I do?

Can I look forward to new shortURL features? Or may I suggest one?

I've forgotten my shortURL address, what do I do?

Do you provide free webspace?

Do I risk ever losing my shortURL address?

















How can my site benefit from a shortURL address?

Here's a few of the great benefits:

1) Permanent URL for life!
    If your host goes down, or you choose to move your site to another host, you can redirect your traffic instantly. No matter how many times you move your site, your visitors will always find you.
2) Get a short, professional looking & easy to remember URL!

3) Make sure visitors get to YOUR site and not your affiliates.
    If you have a url that has your affiliate or other tracking ID in it then it's known that some people may cut out or change it when visiting your URL.
4) Features such as Mirror Management can greatly benefit a webmaster who uses mirrors to balance traffic or provide redundancy. You can use shortURL to divert traffic to mirrors according to weights you assign, or generate a list of your mirrors, so you can always have a permanent mirror list for visitors to choose from!


    




What is Prefix Forwarding (ANYTHING.you.shortURL.com) all about?

Lets us explain this with an example...
If Bob registered the shortURL: bob.filetap.com he could also use his URL with a www. prefix www.bob.filetap.com as well as anything.bob.filetap.com where anything can be any words or numbers, anytime.

If you activate Prefix Path Forwarding in your account, you can forward anything.bob.filetap.com to a directory called anything on your site
For more info see: Prefix Path Forwarding

    




What is Prefix Path Forwarding, and how does it work?

To understand Prefix Path Forwarding, you need to first understand that your shortURL supports the use of anything attached as a prefix to your name (Prefix Forwarding).

If you enabling path forwarding and used the forwarding prefix: ANYHTHING.you.shorturl.com visitors will be sent to a directory named/ANYTHING/ on your site. For example, Joe who uses joe.vze.com has this as his real URL: http://www.some-web-host.com/users/joe/ and he has an mp3 page at: http://www.some-web-host.com/users/joe/mp3/. Joe can use the shortURL: mp3.joe.vze.com and it will go to his /mp3/ page!

Joe could also use regular path forwarding: joe.vze.com/anypath/anypage.html to do the same trick!

    




What is Path Forwarding, and how does it work?

You can use your shortURL to forward to a specific path and/or file on your site by simply adding that path and/or file name to the end of your shortURL. For example, if Joe had the shortURL: joe.vze.com which forwards to:
www.some-web-host.com/users/joe/ and he wanted to link to a page at: www.some-web-host.com/users/joe/mp3links.html he could use the shortURL: joe.vze.com/mp3links.html to forward directly to that page!

    




What is Mirror Management all about?

If you have mirrors of your site you can use your shortURL to balance traffic between them, or provide redundancy.

This can be done two ways: 1) You can have shortURL randomly forward to a mirror, weighing any URLs you wish to get more or less traffic. 2) Or, have shortURL generate a page, providing visitors with a list your mirrors to choose from along with a description for each one. Sample here. If one URL goes down or is slow, visitors can use another, helping keep your site online at all times!

    




What is URL masking?

Normally, after your shortURL.com forwards to your real URL, your real URL is then shown in the browser's address bar. Turning on URL masking, allows you to keep your shortURL in the address bar by using a hidden frame trick. This frame is invisible to the user. Then, if visitors bookmark your site, they bookmark your shortURL, and search engines will link to your shortURL as well. 95% of our users choose to use this feature.

    




What is Frame Kill?

Frame Kill forces your site to pop out of any frames it may be loading in. For example if another website links to you and opens your site inside their frame.

How does this work? If you have URL masking turned on, we insert JavaScript code into the hidden frame. If URL masking is off, we create an invisible and temporary page loading the JavaScript to first pop out your site then use HTML to forward the user. This process is invisible to the user, other than seeing your site pop out of a frame.

    




Tell me more about shortURL traffic reports.

With a shortURL address you will have access to traffic stats with daily and monthly reports displaying unique and raw visits and referring URLs. We also calculate your unique/raw ratio and daily averages.

The Referring URL Report allows you to see where your visitors are coming from! An hourly report displays all the URLs that have sent traffic to your shortURL address, as well as a list of keywords used to find your site in search engines. Sample Traffic Report Here.

    




Can I get the email address: [email protected]?

No shortURL does not offer email forwarding services. However, our sister site 2Ya.com does. 2Ya.com allows you to get your own domain name (yourname.com) and forward that to your website. You also get 100 email forwarding addresses ([email protected]) or ([email protected]) that you can customize individualy. There's a whole suite of services that are offered free with every domain registration.

    




I have not yet received an activation email with my password!

Possible Reason #1:
We've noticed that during busy times on the net, some email providers (notably the free email services such as hotmail, excite, nightmail, yahoo etc) will not immediately accept mail. We queue these mails and re-try delivery every five minutes, but be aware that if you use a free email service, you may have to wait several hours for your email provider to accept your mail from us.

Possible Reason #2:
You may have made a typo when entering your email address.

Possible Reason #3:
Your email provider may be suffering network problems and the email delivery has been lost, rejected or delayed.

Solution:
Visit our Activation Email Resend Page where you can resend the email or make changes to the email address. You will need to login using your shorturl address and the first name you provided when you created your account.

    




Will I loose my old URL when I get a shortURL address?

No, it will not be effected at all. In fact, you need to keep your existing URL because we will be redirecting your shortURL address to that location. We are a URL redirection service, not a hosting service. If you ever change your real website address, you can easily update your shortURL account to redirect to the new location.


    




What's the catch, how is this service offered for free?

Unlike other redirects, we do NOT place annoying pop-up ads or banner frames on your site. We have had to however start displaying a small frame on the bottom of your site. We have made the frame as non intrusive and small as possible. It contains a small text link to us. View an example by going here: http://sample.2ya.com. This sample contains more information about why and how the frame is implemented.

Remove the ad frame by upgrading to a Premium Account. We now offer free premium account options.

    




Can I get my own domain, myname.com?

Yes! Our sister site 2Ya.com allows you to register your own domain name. Not only do you get a better website address, there's a whole suite of services that are offered free with every domain registration that you can't find at shortURL, or anywhere for that matter.

    




Can I forward to a network IP address?

You can forward to an IP address that resolves normaly through the browser with http://130.94.133.172 If port 80 is blocked on your home network, setup your webserver to work on another port and build it into the URL. For example, http://130.94.133.172:81/ where 81 is the port.

Our sister site 2Ya.com allows you to create a true DNS Address Record and forward to your IP without without the drawbacks of URL Frame forwarding. We offer a Dynamic DNS feature which will run in the background of your computer and automatically update your DNS Address IP should it ever change. However, if port 80 is blocked you'll have to use 2YA's URL domain forwarding because DNS Address records can only point to specific IPs and not ports.

You can also create MX records to forward email to your IP or use email forwarding to forward to any address.

Not only do you get a better website address (yourname.com), there's a whole suite of services that are offered free with every domain registration that you can't find at shortURL, or anywhere for that matter.

    




Can you create an MX record for me?

No we do not offer this. However, our sister site 2Ya.com allows gives you full and total control of all DNS records.

You can create MX records to forward email to any IP or mail service. Or use our built-in email forwarding controls; create up to 100 emails addresses that forward [email protected] anywhere you wish.

Not only do you get a better website address (yourname.com), there's a whole suite of services that are offered free with every domain registration that you can't find at shortURL, or anywhere for that matter.


    




Will you use advertisements on my address?

Premium accounts have no advertisements and you can now get a Premium Account for free! Basic accounts show a small link bar with our link in it. Click here to see it.

    




I've lost my password, what do I do?

If you've never changed your assigned password, then you can find your assigned password in the shortURL welcome email. Otherwise go to the password retrieval page, enter your shortURL address and we will email it to you.

    




I've forgotten my shortURL address, what do I do?

How the heck did you loose that? If you haven't deleted your original shortURL welcome email, you can find the address your registered listed there. Other wise you will have to contact us with the email address you signed up with, estimated signup date, and your mothers maiden name if you didnt loose that too :-)

    




Can I look forward to new shortURL features? Or may I suggest one?

Yes! & Yes! We are always brainstorming, and looking for new ideas. At the moment, we are working on 2 new shortURL features...soon to be released...but to stay ahead of the competition, they can't yet be announced.

    




Will you help me promote my new URL?

Yes! We offer all our users the free use of our search engine submission tool, allowing you to submit your site to the top 24 search engines. We have also developed an Internet Directory Promotion Guide, helping you get your site listed on all the popular Internet Directories. Additionaly, our webmaster tools area for our members has tips, tools, links and articles to aid you in the successful development and promotion of your site.

    




Do you provide free webspace?

No we do not provide webspace. You will need an existing website to use our service.

    




Do I risk ever losing my shortURL address?

No, as long as you do not violate our Terms of Services. Basically, if you don't spam or forward to explicit porn or illegal material then you're addres stays active.

However to protect ourselves and you, we can't promise anything.

If you want a 100% guarantee, we suggest buying your own domain name like yourname.com. You will be the true owner of your own domain, not life-time dependent upon ours or our servers. You will have the freedom to transfer your domain name to any registrar, at anytime, should you ever be unhappy with service.

Our sister site 2Ya.com allows you to get your own domain name (yourname.com) and forward that to your website. There's a whole suite of services that are offered free with every domain registration. 2Ya.com offers service, speed, performance, and reliability that is superior to shortURL.

2Ya.com forwarding and DNS services are maintained on multiple domain name servers located at different locations throughout the United States. Each of these locations has multiple high-bandwidth Internet connections, battery or diesel generator back-up power, security, and access to three different major Internet backbones. These dispersed, redundant name servers give us the ability to always delegate your domain, with no interruptions in service. We have gone to great lengths to make sure at least one of our name servers is up at all times.


    



















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