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I'm not familiar with HE's DNS service but unlike they specifically offer such a feature you can't. Well, at least not unless you have some webserver sitting around somewhere, which you can configure to do the forwarding.
Many DNS providers I use offer this feature. (Even if the domain has no web hosting.) I'm trying to figure out HE's implementation.
You can not do that in DNS. As pointed out above, that is a feature in a webserver.
Many DNS providers may offer that functionality by using web servers, but I am almost certain that HE is not one of them.
Is their any third-party service offering free web URL forwarding, without having DNS or hosting with them? (Possibly by pointing an A record or CNAME to them.)
https://freedirector.io/ No experience with them.
I don't know any standalone services, but if you have a web server running somewhere (VPS, shared plan, etc) you can do it with a couple .htaccess redirect rules.
Which also usually gives you the benefit of handling https redirects, since most registrars and such will only do http.
www.example.com CNAME www.yahoo.com
Of if you are using NGINX,you can "return 301 http://www.yahoo.com"
You don't do that with DNS, you do that with HTTP.. 301 or 302 redirect.
You could run a very small VPS that does this.
example.com on the VPS just hosting the redirect. dns.he.net has example.org pointing to the VPS.
Try https://freedirector.io/ or https://redirect.name/
Or you can switch to nsone, they provide free url redirecting.
Can be done with Cloudflare too, if you are going to switch.
https://1984.hosting/product/freedns/ would work too. I figure OP seems to favor HE for some reason though.
I like their DNS platform, for web-GUI DNS it is my favourite.
If I remember correctly (please see for yourself) GleSYS handles this for free
Edit: https://glesys.com/services/domains
This would work, but the browser would continue to show
www.example.com, which doesn't seem to be what the OP wantsAs others have pointed out, web forwarding requires a web server set up by someone somewhere that will do the forwarding
In addition, HTTPS probably won't work, because this would require the web server to have a certificate for your domain, and normally, you wouldn't want someone's web server to have a certificate for your domain (unless you have a contract/account with them)
You can redirect https://www.example.com to https://www.yahoo.com same as you can for http. The webserver needs a certificate for www.example.com which isn't difficult. Exclude the 301/302 redirects for the verification or use DNS based verifications.
Indeed, it isn't difficult per se, but it's an extra step, and someone needs to provide this service
Recall that the context is that you have a domain
www.example.combut that you don't have/operate a web server for itWas that added somewhere after the initial post?
HTTPS is always extra steps..
I mean, if you read the opening post,
does it sound like the OP has/operates a web server for
www.example.com?Perhaps the OP does have/operate a web server for
www.example.com, but then he probably would have phrased his question differently (e.g., how to implement web forwarding on Apache)In any case, it's a reasonable inference based on how the OP phrased his question that he doesn't have/operate (at the moment) a web server for
www.example.comhttps://freedns.afraid.org/signup/features/
Feature List:
...
Free and premium URL redirection [web forwarding]
...
Indeed, they offer web forwarding, but unless I'm mistaken, only for HTTP
Probably yes, in this case, maybe he can use a free shared hosting that usually includes SSL.
Right, in practical terms, getting cheap shared hosting for this purpose probably makes the most sense, which would also allow one to maintain maximum control over the domain and the certificate
Edit: Cloudflare?
I'm with @rcy026 on this.
Web forwarding is of course a web functionality, allowing you to forward/redirect one URL to another, so you won't be able to achieve that with HE's free DNS service, mainly because its purely a DNS service.
When you mention "many DNS providers" offer the feature, are you referring to registrars' DNS services?
I'm pretty sure they have a web server behind that's doing all the forwarding, and with that, they also have some sort of "parking" services where if your domain is pointed to their NSs, visitors would end up at their landing/parking page.
You can be 100 % sure.
Still, it's easy to get this done for free.
I guess that Cloudflare would offer a free(?) solution to the OP's problem, but he doesn't seem inclined to use Cloudflare for this
The other free(?) solution would be to use the registrar of the domain for this, assuming that they offer web forwarding for HTTPS as well
Yes, it would be free
I know, but it won't be HE that's doing the forwarding/redirecting.
My response was just based on OP's inquiry, about using HE's DNS specifically for web forwarding.
If OP insists on using HE for his domain's DNS, he can use free services like redirect.pizza to handle the web forwarding part, which he'll then just need to point the necessary
CNAMEand/orArecords to redirect.pizza's servers.I wasn't aware of redirect.pizza -- they have a clever name