What other choices do we have other than the 301 redirect and CNAME on DNS?

Question

I have a main site http://qweop.com, and I would like to add an alias to it called http://qwepo.com.

Now if I use a CNAME (currently this is what I'm using) on qwepo which maps www to qweop.com, then when i go http://qwepo.com I will be shown the content from http://qweop.com

This is fine, however I want the browser address bar to show qweop.com instead of qwepo.com even if the user types visits http://qwepo.com and not http://qweop.com.

Now I've heard of the 301 moved permanently, but it seems like it's a solution for people who have a new url for their website (which is of course not in my case here).

What other choices do we have other than the 301 redirect and CNAME on DNS ?

Basically the end result is that whenever someone types qwepo.com/foobar it will bring them to qweop.com/foobar AND the address bar will show qweop.com/foobar

PS: is domain forwarding the same thing as a 301 redirect? is masking the same thing as a CNAME on DNS ?

Answer 1

Basically the end result is that whenever someone types qwepo.com/foobar it will bring them to qweop.com/foobar AND the address bar will show qweop.com/foobar

301 Permanent Redirect is EXACTLY what you need here.

That's what Wikipedia says about your case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_redirection#Similar_domain_names

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If you web server is Apache, then this is the rule that will do such redirect (mod_rewrite is required):

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} =qwepo.com
RewriteRule .* http://qweop.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

If it is IIS 7.x, then use the following rule (using URL Rewrite module):

<system.webServer>
    <rewrite>
        <rules>
            <rule name="Proper Domain Name" stopProcessing="true">
                <match url=".*" />
                <conditions>
                    <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="qwepo.com" />
                </conditions>
                <action type="Redirect" url="http://qweop.com{REQUEST_URI}" redirectType="Permanent" />
            </rule>
        </rules>
    </rewrite>
</system.webServer>