Walkthrough · Beginner · 5 minutes
How to Set Up Domain Forwarding
Route everyone who visits one domain straight on to another — a hands-on walkthrough in plain words that names the classic mistake before you reach it.
The short answer
One line covers it: route everyone who visits one domain straight on to another — a beginner-level job of roughly 5 minutes.
Below are the precise steps, the classic stumble, and one tip from the support desk. Wherever the platform already does a step for you, the guide says so rather than handing you a machine's chores.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
Beginner
Skill rating
5 minutes
Time budget
5
Steps in total
24/7
Support on call
No prior knowledge assumed — a hosting account, a browser and 5 minutes of attention is the whole entry requirement. Every instruction runs on our platform exactly as printed, and carries over to any standard cPanel host.
A promise before step one: nothing here is a one-way door. Any step with teeth is flagged, and the way back is printed beside it.
The whole job in one view
Set out end to end, the route is: decide between 301 and 302, settle what happens to the path, write the rule, give the forwarding name its own certificate and test every way in.
Every stage is a few minutes of unhurried clicking — the total depends mostly on how well you already know the control panel. The detailed instructions are further down; read the whole path once before you begin.
One caution before you click anything
Setting the forward up and skipping the certificate on the forwarding name. Everyone typing https://olddomain gets a browser security warning before the redirect can fire, and people arriving from bookmarks are precisely who that catches.
Forewarned is genuinely forearmed here. This one mistake accounts for most of the frustration the topic ever causes — and it disappears entirely once somebody points it out.
The support desk's own short cut
While you are there, forward the common misspellings and the .com or .co.uk sibling of the brand as well. It costs very little and brings mistyped traffic home for as long as you hold the names.
Habits this small are what separate the people who find hosting effortless from the people who find it draining. The same tools on both sides — a different way of working.
What a Hosting & Domains plan spares you
Some steps in this guide exist only because hosting traditionally forced them on you. Here the SSL issues itself, the copy is taken daily without being asked, and one-click installers remove the manual setup. What is left is the part that was always genuinely yours.
Should a step still misfire, support answers at any hour with an actual fix rather than a knowledge-base link and a shrug. Half the guides on this site began as repeat patterns in our ticket queue.
The hosting these steps were tested on
Every walkthrough in this library is run on the platform we actually operate — cPanel, LiteSpeed, NVMe, one-click installs — so the instructions match your screen rather than gesturing at it from a distance.
Support means a person at any hour, and the remit covers the awkward practical questions other hosts hand straight back.
- Every step checked exactly as published
- The snag named before it arrives
- The dull steps taken out of your way
- People reachable at any hour you stall
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Taken from real tickets
These guides came out of the support queue, so every snag flagged is one people genuinely hit.
Jargon never charges you
Every term is defined on the spot or linked to the jargon buster — nothing assumes prior knowledge.
Works exactly as printed
Every step is proven on the platform we run — none of the 'your host may vary' hedging.
Help that keeps your hours, not ours
Stuck on step three at midnight? Support answers at any hour, mid-walkthrough included.
Honest about how big it is
Route everyone who visits one domain straight on to another is a beginner-level job — set aside 5 minutes, with the platform-absorbed steps marked.
Every undo written out
Any step that could bite is marked, together with the exact way to wind it back.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Decide between 301 and 302
A 301 says the move is permanent and carries visitors and ranking signals through to the destination. A 302 marks a temporary diversion and leaves the original name's standing where it was.
- 2
Settle what happens to the path
Path-preserving forwarding sends olddomain.com/page to newdomain.com/page. Bare forwarding drops everybody on the homepage to find their own way. The first is kinder to visitors in almost every case.
- 3
Write the rule
Point the extra name at your hosting, then set the redirect up in cPanel's Redirects screen, old name to target. Would rather write it yourself? A .htaccess rule does exactly the same thing.
- 4
Give the forwarding name its own certificate
The forwarding name needs a certificate of its own. Anybody arriving over https has to finish the handshake before a redirect can run, so without one there is no redirect, only a warning page.
- 5
Test every way in
Test http, then https, each with www and without, and finish on one deep URL. All four should land exactly where you meant them to, and the whole check takes less than a minute.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox by default
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- Softaculous included for one-click application installs
- Your existing site brought across by our engineers, at no charge
- Money back within 30 days on hosting plans, 7 on reseller
- DDoS filtering absorbed at the network edge
- A daily copy, with restores you run yourself from the panel
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old one lapses
- No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
- WordPress Toolkit, with the updates seen to for you
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
Does a 301 pass SEO value on to the destination?
For the most part, yes. A permanent redirect hands over the bulk of the ranking signals across the weeks and months that follow. Every domain migration worth the name has relied on it, so leave the redirect running indefinitely.
Can a name be forwarded without hosting?
Something has to answer the request and issue the redirect: hosting, a registrar's own forwarding feature, or a dedicated redirect service. Here it comes with the hosting, and parked names on any plan can redirect as much as you like at no extra cost.
Will you move my existing site free of charge?
Yes. Open a ticket with the login for your current host and we bring the lot across — files, databases, mailboxes, configuration. You check the copy before DNS moves, and the old site keeps taking traffic right up to the moment the new one serves it, so nobody meets a gap.
What is the uptime commitment, and what happens in a month that misses it?
99.9% — and if a month falls below that through a fault on our side, our terms entitle you to a pro-rated credit; ask and we apply it. Calling it a target rather than a contractual SLA is a deliberate choice. Hardware and network faults surface through platform monitoring, usually before the first customer notices.
Keep reading
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A form visitors actually complete, sending mail that actually arrives — beginner level, about 30 minutes.
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