Advice on parked domain

[tdr]

We currently have our small business website with .com.au domain hosted by our web designer on their server.

We also have a .net.au version of the domain, and have been using this on CP's server to build our new website. Our plan is to then come off the designer's server and run our own site instead.

I'm a bit of a novice in this area, but it looks like changing DNS settings for com.au and parking the domain with my .net.au server should be all I need to do for the cutover, but are there any gotchas I should be aware of? I'm just a little bit hung up about parking the .com.au. I would have preferred to have the "main site" as .com.au and park .net.au instead. Can anybody advise whether I am going to have any problems, or is it basically no difference which domain gets parked?

I'm also reading on web searches to do a permanent redirect for the parked domain in .htaccess. Should I do this? e.g. see this article
301 Permanent redirects for parked domain names

Any advice would be much appreciated!

[ross]

Hi tdr,

That should be sufficient for what you are trying to do! You are definently on the right track.

Are your email accounts for this site going to be using the .net.au or .com.au domain name?

[tdr]

Hi Ross
I've setup email accounts for both domains figuring this would be the best way to catch any stray emails, but we only make known the .com.au emails to clients etc.

Since my original posting, the CP support team has swapped my domains such that the .com.au domain is now my main domain and .net.au is parked. In doing so I feel a lot happier about my particular setup, but am still interested in what goes on behind a parked domain since if I had say 3 domains, then this isn't an option. Any views on whether to implement the 301 re-direct, or is this not necessary?

cheers

[ross]

Hi,

Parked Domain is acceptable way of doing things, if they all point to the same website!

If they are going to load different websites, you can utilize the Addon Domains feature. This will allow you to use your existing account and existing bandwidth / disk space to run a different site.

If however all the other domains are just pointing to the same website already being hosted, then a parked domain is perfectly fine.