Thread: Vanity URLs--can I create them in BV?

Lately I see more and more "vanity" URLs in large-company ads. The intent is to get consumers to visit a particular page of the company's site so they can see a specific offer, play a game, etc. An example of a vanity URL would be www.bigcompany.com/tictactoe

At the end of these URLs I never see a ".html" or ".php" or any other extension, which makes it easier for the consumer to type it correctly into their browser.

Is there some way in BV that I can create pages which can be accessed via vanity URLs--that is, URLs with no ".html" or ".php" or any other extension at the end of the URL? Maybe via some kind of redirect?

I've never heard it called it a 'Vanity url' but hey ho!!

In your example www.bigcompany.com/tictactoe, tictactoe is simply a sub folder that contains all the pages within that section. If you wish you can organise all your pages that way, you just have to remember that each folder will need its own index page.

Firstly, you need to create these new folders and I would do this via the FTP access which can be found in the BV program. Click on Tools > FTP Manager. If its your primary site, click on the public_html folder and create a new folder within it. If its an addon site, click on the public_html folder, then click on the addon site folder, the create a new folder within that.


When you publish your pages:

If its your primary domain - you publish to public_html/foldername

If its and addon domain - you publish to public_html/youraddondomain.com/foldername

I hope thats clear enough for you.

Thanks, Darren, but I think I might have found another (quicker to implement) way:

In cPanel, under Domains, I clicked Redirects and then chose (from the dropdown menu) the domain for which I want to create the vanity URL. To the right of the dropdown I typed in the part of the URL that comes after the forward slash. And below that I specified the page to which I want the URL to re-direct, and clicked the "Add" button.

I chose to have this vanity URL re-direct to a site where you actually can play tic-tac-toe, but I could just as easily have directed it to a promotional page on my own site where they could play a similar game:
http://www.jimhinckley.com/tictactoe

Re the method you described, if created a subfolder called 'games' I assume I could then publish pages with URLs such as (these pages don't exist of course):
www.jimhinckley.com/games/tictactoe.html and
www.jimhinckley.com/games/hangman.html

Is that right? Assuming it is--and I do appreciate you explaining about the subfolders--the only disadvantage of these URLs is that they are more complex (multiple slashes) and require typing ".html" at the end of them, which the consumer might not do.

I am a bit lost with your thinking about the consumer forgetting about typing in the .html bit. (why tell them?)

If done as I explained and I was promoting your games. I would say visit www.mysite.com/games On this page I would have a list of my games.

Sorry, I'm probably missing something in your message. Wouldn't you have to tell the visitor to type the extension (.html, .php, or whatever) as part of the URL in order to make the page appear? When I try creating a page with a URL like www.mysite.com/games in BV, and try to get to it without typing the extension, I get an error page ("the page cannot be found").

But when I use the redirect tool in cPanel to create the URL, that URL works fine without the extension.

When you tell someone what your site is called, you don't say its www.mysite.com/index.html do you? You say its www.mysite.com don't you? With your games folder, providing you publish an index page to it, you wouldn't tell people its www.mysite.com/games/index.html, you would simply say www.mysite.com/games. Any pages after that would be www.mysite.com/games/page2.html, www.mysite.com/games/page3.html and so on but you wouldn't necessarily tell people these specific pages.

Although I have used the redirect tool in CP many times, I haven't used it to create a url, so you may know something I don't.

OK, now I'm getting your point. For a long time I've thought that each of my BV sites could have only one "index" page--mainly because I've registered a domain for each of them and created an addon domain in cPanel for each of them.

Within each of these addon sites I don't think I've ever tried creating subfolders, each of which can have its own "index" page. Now that I know I can, I'll have another way to create the "vanity" URLs. Thanks, Darren!

Well actually there are lots of sites which have the facility to play the game and at the same time you would love to play the game because all are small and very interesting game. You should try on the Google once for the sits.

davyjonesfd...
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