I have read a lot of redirecting posts but haven’t found a solution that works for me.
I need a way of redirecting subfolders to a page on another domain but (ideally) keep displaying the original URL. I am currently using a frame to accomplish this. So my questions are:
does using a frame on mysite.com/users/1000/ to display a page from another server in another location (login1.server.com) add ANY loading time or in any way affect the performance that Agent 1000 would experience based on if they were to login directly to login1.server.com?
if so, is there a better way to forward and mask without hindering the performance of login1.server.com?
the actual URL to redirect to is like this: http://login1.server.com:81/login.php - does that port designation affect the entry in an htaccess redirect? because the examples I have tried have not worked properly.
My apologies for my terseness above. It was due to my interpretation of your request as typical of a pirate stealing content from another website (by hosting it in a frame on his own website). That is clearly copyright infringement and should lead to criminal prosecution. (I have safeguards built into the scripts I have where I want to ensure that does not happen to me.)
Additionally, frames have been “frowned upon” for so long that I was surprised to see your question and especially so without confirmation that the remote content is your own product.
Today’s use of AJAX will allow you to use (and update) data from anywhere so long as it’s piped through your own website (I am NOT suggesting to copy others work and present as your own!) within named tags (generally specified by id=“…”). Not to use this technology in favor of deprecated frames does not make sense to me.
Apache.org does have (in the Apache documentation) information about load balancing using mod_rewrite but it seemed to me to require too much processing before presenting a page. I solved a “request collision” problem for a client by replicating a HUGE file in another directory and offering visitors links to the one they preferred (citing the other should be used as an alternate). Without any more information from you about what you’re attempting, however, that is the best info I can provide.
First off, thank you for your response. My first impression was simply that I must need to be a little more direct in my questioning I can see now that this could be a common question for someone looking to rip off someone else’s content/system and make it appear as their own. I should have made my situation a little more clear.
We lease all servers mentioned above, as well as a few others. The login servers are to our dialer. It was recommended to me by those from whom we lease the dialer servers to set something up like this… 1) to hide the name of hosting company and 2) to be able to load balance easier.
Funny thing… the hosting company from whom we lease the mysite.com server actually has posted in their FAQ the frame method for “simple domain name masking”, which is how I had gotten the idea.
I could do without the masking, if necessary. I really think we need actual redirecting, rather than pulling content into our other server, as the methods we use with our dialer require the absolute fastest response times. So, ideally, I would prefer the agents end up on the actual login servers. If I have to just use simple redirects and leave the dialing company exposed to our agents and potential competitors, so be it. Would just be nice to have our name in the URL, rather than someone else, I suppose.
Do the load balancing apps work across domains? My access to the login servers are limited (as I haven’t wanted to assume root responsibility). And if so, do they have the capability to mask? And if so, any suggestions for one that works well and is, hopefully, easy to implement?
No problem. I was just concerned that I came on too heavy.
I’m afraid that I’ve never heard of your dialer servers but, if you’re using someone else’s server to simply login, you should be able to direct them to remove their branding when your visitors request a login (they can do this for just your visitors, not necessary to remove from all logins for other clients). If they won’t, I’m sure that there are more cooperative companies.
My comments about using AJAX rather than frames should give you the hint to take advantage of Google’s push to make all websites use SSL technology (no warnings on mixed http/https requests).
I’m sure that load balancing does work but it’s been a while since my review of options so I’m currently devoid of recommendations (and ideas). Sorry to be useless on this count - I hope I did better on the other questions.
Helped indeed. I was afraid the frame was adding even the slightest delay to performance… thank you for confirming that. It certainly cannot be the final method then.
There isn’t actually any branding on the login servers… it’s just the URL that some are concerned about.
Part of the issue is we are in the middle of a “proof of concept” and once we get this thing dialed in (no pun intended), we will be presenting it to potential partners/investors. It is those potential partners/investors that some of us are afraid will take note of the URL and have the first step in recreating what we have done.
Anyway… no worries. I am pretty sure I can come up with some load balancing code myself. Just didn’t want to dive into that until I could figure this out.
I fear that I got carried away with that one, too, as ANY request to another server should take just a bit longer than from a relative (internal) link. My main concern would be that the external server might have problems (down or simply overwhelmed by other requests). If you’ve outsourced the login, you don’t have much choice (although I’d still use AJAX to bring the login’s form into your website - at least your server could post an announcement that it’s waiting for the login form to load) but it would also hide the external URL (that would be important to me, too!).
I think you may also be able to use link rel="prefetch" to instruct the browser to pre-load the login page, but my earlier research did not point towards a single accepted way of doing it…
I can see now that this could be a common question for someone looking to rip off someone else’s content/system and make it appear as their own. I should have made my situation a little more clear.