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How can my site benefit from a shortURL address?
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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.
No annoying popup ads!
Get a short, professional looking & easy to remember URL!
Mirror management features 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!
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What is Prefix Forwarding (ANYTHING.you.shortURL.com) all about?
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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
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What is Prefix Path Forwarding, and how does it work?
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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!
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What is Path Forwarding, and how does it work?
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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!
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What is Mirror Management all about?
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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!
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What is URL masking?
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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.
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What is Frame Kill?
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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.
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Tell me more about shortURL traffic reports.
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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.
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Can I get the email address: myname@shortURL.com?
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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 (yourname@yourdomain.com) or (anything@yourdomain.com) that you can
customize individualy. There's a whole suite of services that are offered free with every domain registration.
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I have not yet received an activation email with my password!
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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.
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Will I loose my old URL when I get a shortURL address?
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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.
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What's the catch, how is this service offered for free?
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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.
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I've seen other redirect services, why choose yours?
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That's an easy one...
shortURL has more features than ANY OTHER redirect service.
We are committed to the development of new features and better services for you and your site.
We have quality and short .COM names! Why use those funky looking names the others have when you can
get the professional look of a subdomain?
Those names from other countries like: .ws .to .sh and .at can be confusing to visitors and harder to remember than a .com
name. Which format do you see advertised more? Which do people immediately understand? dot com!
Our customer service is fast... just try us!
We don't place popups or other ads in your URL!
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I've seen free Domain Name offers, why not use those?
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Do NOT be fooled by free domain name services! There are a few sites on the web that allow you to register
a domain name for free, but there are many very unpleasant catches. First, you do need to supply credit card so
that once your domain is up for renewal, they can charge you (and it's not at good price). Second, they register the domain
in their company name, so you are not the official registrant! This means that they are the legal owners of the domain, NOT you.
You may not be able to transfer the domain to another registrar, sell the domain to another person, and maybe stuck
renewing your name at their high prices for ever. Third, they will place a frame with banner on your site, so you're stuck with an
annoying and cluttering banner at all times. In our opinion this practice is unethical!
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Can I get my own domain, myname.com?
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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.
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Can I forward to a network IP address?
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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.
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Can you create an MX record for me?
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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 anything@yourdomain.com 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.
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Will you use advertisements on my address?
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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.
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I've lost my password, what do I do?
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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.
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I've forgotten my shortURL address, what do I do?
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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 :-)
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Can I look forward to new shortURL features? Or may I suggest one?
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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.
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Will you help me promote my new URL?
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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.
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Do you provide free webspace?
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No we do not provide webspace. You will need an existing website to use our service.
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Do I risk ever losing my shortURL address?
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No, as long as you do not violate our Terms of Services.
Your address is dependent upon us staying online, in business, and maintaining service. We have been operating
since 1997 and never expect to ever go belly up. However to protect ourselves and you, we can't promise anything,
that is also in our Terms of service.
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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