When using a free webspace provider or the webspace from your ISP, you will usually find that the url is long and unmemorable; usually in the form www.members.domain/~directory (yes, its a bit of a mouthful lol). If you wanted to promote your site, put the url on business cards, or even just tell people, they may not remember something like that. The best way around this is to buy your own domain, but because the theme of this site is about doing it for free, the next best way is to get a free redirection URL . Because a redirection url is pointed at your site, it is so useful if you happen to change web hosts as I have done in the past .

Subdomains Vs. Subdirectories
First of all, a redirect URL is either a subdomain or a subdirectory of an existing domain. The subdomain is on the left of the domain eg coffeeaddict.cjb.net where coffeeaddict is the subdomain and .cjb.net is the actual domain. A subdirectory, however, is on the left of the domain, preceded by a slash (/) eg drink.to/coffeeaddict. In this case, the domain is drink.to/ and the subdirectory is coffeeaddict.

In my mind, the subdomain looks more professional and more like a proper domain than the subdirectory, especially on a short domain. Subdirectories, to me anyway, tend to look more 'fun' or jokey, so are ideal for homepages. They tend to use the .TO domain (this belongs to the Isle of Tonga) eg FLY.TO and .AT (Austrian) domain eg LAUGH.AT. Even so, they are still shorter and easier to remember than most web providers URL's.

Domain Cloaking
When you sign up for a redirect URL, there is usually the option to 'cloak' the destination (real) URL of your site. What this means is that the redirect URL stays in the location window of the browser hiding the unsightly one provided of the web provider. It does this by creating a HTML Frame (I'll explain this in detail in another tutorial, but HTML allows the web author to split the screen into several frames or windows, and each one can contain a separate web page, but the URL of the HTML page stays in the location window. In this case, the frame takes up the space of the entire browser and contains the the destination site in that window. Hope it makes sense, if not email me [an error occurred while processing this directive] ) for your site. This makes it look more profession in my opinion, and if this option was turned off, people would see the real URL in the location window.

Subdomain and Path Forwarding
With path forwarding and/or subdomain forwarding and some careful planning, your subdomain can function almost as a proper domain if these are supported. Firstly, path forwarding: if a redirect called http://mysubdomain.domain.net was used to point to http://members.webprovider.com/~mypages/, and this had a subdirectory of test/, you could use http://mysubdomain.domain.net/test/ to go to that directory, and also http://mysubdomain.domain.net/test/test.html to link to http://members.webprovider.com/~mypages/test/test.html. Subdomain forwarding is very similar, but you use a further subdomain of your subdomain to point to the folder on your site. eg http://test.mysubdomain.domain.net/ would point to http://members.webprovider.com/~mypages/test/ and http://test.mysubdomain.domain.net/test.html would point to http://members.webprovider.com/~mypages/test/test.html. It is a very flexible way of making your site address look more professional.

Keywords and Stats
Because the Redirect URL is essentially a web page that opens a frame, it will be written in HTML/Javascript and this means that it will be able to contain <TITLE> and <META> tags to help in search engine promotion. Any decent redirect provider will allow you to customise this by entering in your own keywords and title.

Stats are another useful feature to have in a redirect URL, as they can tell you the referrer (the site that linked to you), the amount of hits and more. They may be private (meaning you have to log in to access them) or may occur in a popup window.

The downside of any free web resource is the fact that it contains advertising either in the form of a popup ad, ad frame or a banner . Redirect URLs are no different, but normally just use popups or frames to display their ads. They are a pain and many offer a 'Premium' option which allows you to pay to remove ads. This to me is a real waste of money, as some companies charge as much as it would cost to buy a real domain. I wouldn't recommend this; if you are really concerned about this, just buy a real domain like I did .

Conclusion
There are a lot of redirect URLs available. Just researching for this site showed me this. My list is big, but believe me, there is a lot more bookmarked to go in. The thing to look out for is a shortish domain eg CJB.NET, or XRS.NET and one that offers path/subdomain forwarding, cloaking and stats. Some, like CJB.NET offer guestbooks, forums and chat rooms as well as email at your subdomain, so they are a good starting point. But take a look around through the ones on here and get your website a great new URL!