Think Different

So you may have come across the term of cloaking URLs, this usually sounds evil and bad, like cloaked pages, which is something entirely different. Cloaking pages is presenting pages based on certain conditions, usually presenting a specific page to Google, for example. Doing this will get you banned and removed from Google's index. Not good. Cloaking URLs is a slightly different concept. It's showing a URL that usually points to something in your own domain. Once you click on the link you'll be redirected to the 'real' destination URL. For example a CJ link for eBay would look like this: http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-1751-2978-328/1?aid=10366506&pid=123456 But to cloak it you would make it look like this: http://www.money-code.com/ebay For this example we'll use Apache's module called mod_rewrite. Almost all installs of Apache have this installed, but some may not, so you'll need to verify this. Also, this will need to be managed via a .htaccess...

This is software that retrieves a web page and then displays it in the browser. PHP or SSI (in conjunction with a CGI program) can be used. Other programming languages can be used, also, like ASP. With PHP, the program code is generally right in the web page source code. With SSI, the SSI tag calls an external program to fetch the web page. The code on the PHP/SSI web page retrieves the remote web page, inserts a base URL tag into the retrieved web page source code, then displays the contents of the retrieved web page. The URL in the browser's address bar does not change. You end up with the contents of a web page in the browser window that is located at a URL different than the URL in the browser's address bar. The web page originally loaded into the browser and the web page retrieved from elsewhere may be on different domains. There are no visual clues that the web page being displayed is not at the URL in the browser's address bar unless the web page being dis...

Rewriting URLs in a certain way with the .htaccess file can display web pages from a URL different than the URL in the browser's address bar. However, both the URL in the address bar and the web page being viewed must be located on the same domain as the .htaccess file. There are no visual clues that the web page being displayed is not at the URL in the browser's address bar unless the web page being displayed itself contains clues. There are many nuances to consider when writing URL redirect lines for the .htaccess file. Consider testing with an .htaccess file in an otherwise unused subdirectory before going live. Here is a simple directive that will rewrite all URLs for any documents in the /free directory so the /paid/index.html will display, instead. The URL in the browser's address bar will be the original URL to a document in the /free directory. Yet, web page /paid/index.html is being viewed. RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/free($|/) RewriteR...