I have an e-commerce website, lets call it www.sellingstuff.com. Is there a way to create a duplicate site, for example www.otherstuff.com so that they’re identical in every way? For example sellingstuff.com/products.aspx?id=123 should show the same page as otherstuff.com/products.aspx?id=123. There are also URL rewrites to consider such as sellingstuff.com/products/cable which would correlate with the above URL. Any good way to do this?
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Answers
Having more then one domain name point to the save server is VERY common.
In other words, just register the 2nd domain name, and have it point to the same and current existing IP address as the current site.
It is VERY rare that developers of any site will include the actual domain name URL in their code. If such developers did as such, then they would have never been able to develop the web site until such time the domain name is registered. So then, registering 2 domain names to point to the same server is rather a common occurrence, and as such it should just work. You can check the web site bindings, but in most cases, just specifying the IP address will suffice. You then go register the domain name, and specify that IP address for the 1, 2 or as many domain names you want registered that will point to the one web site.
Hence, any web methods and end point calls, or even friendly URL’s will thus resolve to the correct (and same) end point on that existing site.
It’s rare, in fact beyond rare that code behind on such sites would have included the domain name in any code, or page reference. It’s just not done and in fact is rather difficult to do so!
Step 1: Make sure that sellingstuff.com and otherstuff.com are redirected to the same ip address. You can do this through the provider you bought the domain from.
Step 2: Wait for the domains to replicate to global dns servers
Step 3: Test that the domains are correctly routed to the ip. You can test this by typing cmd > “ipconfig /flushdns” then “ping sellingstuff.com” and “ping otherstuff.com” correctly.
Step 4: Open IIS and select the site you added in the sites section. Right click > go to edit bindings. > press add > put sellingstuff.com in hostname and press OK
Step 5: Press add again and enter otherstuff.com and press ok.
This way you can redirect as many domains as you want to a single site.
Additional information :
If you are going to use SSL and you have installed it in IIS, do not forget to select “Require Server Name Indication” after selecting Type > https.