Adding URL forwarding

URL Forwarding lets you point your domain or an individual subdomain to an external website, such as a social media profile, an Etsy shop, or another domain entirely.

Forwarding Types Explained

• Permanent (301) / Temporary (302) Redirect (For Domain Safe Pro Only): This does not retain your original domain in the address bar. Visitors will see the URL change to the destination website. For example, typing yourdomain.com will visibly change to name.com in their browser. 

• Redirect: This does not retain your original domain in the address bar. Visitors will see the URL change to the destination website. For example, typing yourdomain.com will visibly change to name.com in their browser.

• Masked: This retains your original domain in the address bar so visitors will not see the actual destination URL. For example, if you forward yourdomain.com to name.com, the address bar will continue to display yourdomain.com.

  Note: Masked forwarding is achieved using an iframe. Some destination websites do not allow iframe/masked forwarding, which name.com cannot override.

Security Tiers: Free vs. Domain Safe Pro

The level of SSL/HTTPS support depends on the protection plan active on your domain:

How to Set Up URL Forwarding

1. Log into your name.com account.

2. Click My Domains in the top-right corner of the navigation menu.

3. Click on the domain name you wish to forward.

4. Under the Domain Actions menu on the left side of the page, click URL Forwarding.

From here, you have two ways to set up your forwarding:

Option A: Quick Connect to Social Media

If you want to forward your domain to a popular platform, simply click the Connect button next to your desired service:

• Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), Etsy, YouTube, or Yelp.

Option B: Manually Forward Your Domain

To point your domain to any custom destination URL, look under Manually forward your domain and fill out the following fields:

• Subdomain (Optional): Leave this blank to forward your root domain (e.g., yourdomain.com). If you only want a specific subdomain to forward (like blog.yourdomain.com), type "blog" here.

• Forwards to: Enter the destination URL you want traffic to go to. (Note: On the free version, this defaults to an https:// destination protocol).

• Type: Select Redirect or Masked from the drop-down menu.

Click the Update button to finalize and establish your new URL forward.

Notes

• Nameserver Requirement: You must use name.com default nameservers for URL forwarding to function. If your domain points to an external web host's nameservers, the forwarding will not work.

• DNS Changes: Enabling URL forwarding will automatically change or add the necessary A records required for the redirect to work. Deleting or overwriting these specific A records later will break your forwarding.

• Propagation Time: Please allow a few minutes for the new DNS settings to update and take effect globally.