I’m currently making a link shortening service on my hosting package. I’m using URL rewrites to do this. An example of this working is here – dysign.co.uk/xBbYPL. This redirects you to Google.de. I’m using another domain mapped to a folder on my hosting package, so I have 2 sites on 1 hosting plan.
freeyoutubedownloaders.co.uk is mapped to dysign.co.uk/freeyoutubedownloaders. The link shortener is in the freeyoutubedownloaders folder therefore dysign.co.uk/freeyoutubedownloaders/xBbYPL works perfectly fine but if you go to freeyoutubedownloaders.co.uk/xBbYPL then you get a 404 file not found error.
Here’s my rewrite rule in my web.config file:
<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule name="Links">
<match url="^X.{5,5}$" />
<action type="Rewrite" url="Link.aspx?id={R:0}" />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
I’ve also turned on detailed httpErrors if anyone wants to have a look for me.
Lastly I noticed on the error screen it says:
Requested URL http://freeyoutubedownloaders.co.uk:80/freeyoutubedownloaders/xBbYPL
Why is it referring to the domain and then the folder? The Link.aspx page loads fine… (To test it, add ?id=xBbYPL to the end for it to redirect you.)
Ps. I’m not able to access IIS at all due to it being hosted on 123-reg.co.uk
Thanks again! 🙂
Error:

I get the feeling that the domain name
freeyoutubedownloaders.co.ukhas been added as an additional binding to the same website asdysign.co.uk. And somehow (I don’t know how 123reg is setting this up usually) request forfreeyoutubedownloaders.co.uk/<something>get rewritten to/freeyoutubedownloaders/<something>. Or they have set up some kind of reverse proxy for it without you knowing it.When I test this on IIS 7.5 by setting up one website for
dysign.co.ukand a separate website forfreeyoutubedownloaders.co.ukpointing to the/freeyoutubedownloadersdirectory in the root directory of wheredysign.co.ukis pointing to, it all works as expected. So I don’t think there is anything wrong with your thinking on how you want this to work but I think 123reg has done something unusual in the way it binds the domain names to your site(s).