Domain question

[chase]

Hey everyone, I just purchased the .net and .org domains to protect my .com name.

My vbulletin forum is on the .com extension and I think I'll just "point" or "park" (don't know the difference) the 2 new domain extensions to the .com.

By doing this, would I encounter any cookie problems or anything like that on my .com since now that I'm pointing 2 new domains to my site??

Any help is appreciated.

[Ron]

You should point them to your IP, but you should redirect them with .htaccess to your .com domain.

Otherwise, you will be in for mass confusion from everyone, not the least of whom would be Google. ;-)

[chase]

How would I go about doing that?

[Ron]

You want to "park" the domains at the same place as your primary domain.
Then in the www (or public_html, they are the same place) directory you want to create a file called

.htaccess

in that file you want the following commands right at the top:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^www\.whatever\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)         http://www.whatever.com/ [L,R=301]

If you create this file before you park the .net and .org there, this is all you will need to do. If you do it afterward, it gets slightly more complicated.

The first line turns on the program that does the work.
The second line says "If the domain requested is not whatever.com, not case dependent"
The third line says "then redirect the user's browser to whatever.com, with a 301 error code and stop processing any more rewrite rules in the .htaccess file."

I HAVE NOT TESTED THAT CODE, but it should be OK. Just be prepared to reverse the changes in case it's not working.

If you are using subdomains or if you don't use the www prefix, there are some changes that will need to be made. Let me know..
If you need help creating the file or other issues, feel free to ask.