Does any of you know how to mask a URL in php ? or related to Javascriptor Ajax ?

Question

Does any of you know how to mask a URL in php?? Like the one you see in free URL redirectional services (http://www.shorturl.com)

I mean I have a url like http://www.my-server.com/

which will redirect me to http://www.some-other-server.com/abc.php

But I want the URL in the address bar of my browser to show only this URL

http://www.my-server.com/

Is this possible??

Thanks in Advance...

Answer 1

Use url-rewriting via e.g. mod_rewrite.

Edit: won't work cross server, I forgot.
Then link your domain to the other server using the DNS-entry.

Answer 2

The two options are to:

1. Copy the data from the destination URL to the URL you want it to appear on
2. Frames — which have horrible drawbacks and don't stop a user finding out what the real URI is in a click or two.

Trying to disguise a URI while letting a user access it is Not A Good Idea (TM).

Answer 3

You could run nginx or apache in reverse proxy mode on www.my-server.com, and configure it to forward requests to www.my-other-domain.com. If both domains are hosted on the same network, it'll be tolerable. If they are hosted on different networks, the bandwidth waste might be awful.