How to redirect a user to the content of a different URL while still showing the original URL to the user?

Question

I use a domain (www.example.com), which I would like to redirect to an different web space (www.example1.com/user567).

What I use so far is an index file with a redirect header:

<?php
// Permanent redirection
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.example1.com/user567");
exit();
?>

I would like to keep the root URL, when a user access the site. Currently the browser (and search results) are just redirected to www.example1.com/user567.

I can not access the .htaccess file. Is there another technique I can use?

Answer 1

There are two techniques that you can use:

Frame redirects

This is a technique where the first domain serves an HTML frameset that hides the other URL. It has some disadvantages:

• Users may not be able to navigate out of the frameset. Clicking links may not change the URL, even if they navigate to external websites. Users may have a hard time bookmarking or sharing your content.
• Search engines see right through it. They won't refer users to the frameset, but rather to the deep URL.

Reverse Proxy

Your server is configured to fetch the documents from the other domain and reserve them at the preferred URL. This has different disadvantages:

• Search engines see duplicate content.
• It may make pages somewhat slower to load.