N00b in need of knowledge

Ok. So. I'm thinking of switching from my old hosting provider to dreamhost. Here's my complicated situtation:

I have four different accounts (four separate domains) that all run independently right now. I needed the different accounts years ago, because my band kept blasting through the bandwidth limits. Since youtube and myspace now do video hosting, my bandwidth isnt such an issue anymore. However, I have over 100,000 hotlinked pictures spread out over my domains. All being hotlinked from myspace comments, so there isnt a way to edit code on each of the 100,000 profiles to combine them.

Anyway. Point being. Is there any way possible to do some kind of domain forwarding on specific files for these to combine them onto one domain? If not, is there a discount for buying multiple domains (not all at once though) since they dont expire at the same time?

You can leave those domains registered where they are, then just point the nameservers to:

ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com
ns3.dreamhost.com

Then just host them here. You can still keep them as their own separate domains and keep the same directory structure like domain.com/images/whatever.jpg like you have it now.

It doesn't really matter how you have it setup now, whether it's on seperate accounts somewhere else, or all on one account here (you get unlimited domains).

Or, you can use a custom promo code that gives you 4 extra free domains as part of the discount then use that to transfer your registrations here and never have to pay for any of them.

This code will give you 4 free domains for the life of your account, plus a $37 discount: 4DOMS37OFF

You can use .htaccess for redirecting image requests, but if you're not using much bandwidth anymore by moving the videos, it might not be worth the trouble.

its a dire necessity for us to to have those images hosted from that specific domain/directory. Do you know of an article site that would have specific information as to how to use .htaccess on this type of server? I need to see how much effort thats going to be if i decide to go that route

I think your second idea will work out best. You could keep the registration for all four domains and just rehost them at DreamHost. In this case you'll just transfer all content from all four hosting providers to DreamHost and keep all four domains running.

There isn't really any volume discount at DreamHost for purchasing domain names but you could always use a promo code like my DHPC3DOMAIN52 that gives you 3 extra free domain registrations. If you visit the link in my signature, you'll see other codes as well if you want more extra domains.

Without editing the outgoing links from the myspace profiles, you won't really be able to consolidate domains. I'll keep thinking, though.

For more info, you may want to refer to this article. http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Transfer_your_site_to_us and http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/DNS_-_Viewing_site_before_DNS_change>http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/DHSOTM
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/DNS_-_Viewing_site_before_DNS_change

Read carefully and follow the instructions so that there will be no downtime during transferring :P

I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out a scheme involving redirection for a while, but here's the problem I've come up against:

Let's say you use domain redirection to redirect your four hosts to a single one hosted at DreamHost. Your first problem is that simple domain redirection will only redirect the hostname and the rest of the url path will be the same, so if you have overlap in directories and filenames, you're going to have collisions. The only way around this is to use url rewriting on the original hosts to redirect to subdirectories on the new account.

But at any rate, the original four domains will come up for renewal someday and since you can't edit the original links on the myspace pages, you will end up having to renew registration for those domains.

Anyway, I'm hoping your problems will be solved merely by hosting all four domains under one account here at DreamHost.

You can host all your existing domains in dreamhost in one account.

No matter you need to use your 4 original domain name or you want to forward them to a new domain name, you will need to renew them.



Actually, you are reducing you originally $97 for $15 for each extra lifertime domain you get. It is higher than normal 1 year renewal fee but it is lifetime provided that you use dreamhost service. You can promote dreamhost in your website and gain the hosting fee back if you want.

If you do not need these extra domain, you can always click my below link for full $97 discount.

EDIT : WOW, I only see the original post so I reply but so many posts had been out since that time :P

If you're talking about using the same domain.com/directory structure that you're using now, then that's simple--you just use the same structure here.

When someone goes to domain.com/images/asdf.jpg, their browser doesn't care where you're hosted, how your account is setup, etc.

Now, if you were talking about making all requests for domainONE.com/images/asdf.jpg redirect to domainTWO.com/images/asdf.jpg, then that can be done too. BUT... you'd have to keep all domain registrations active to do it, so you wouldn't really gain or save anything.

Basically, you can't let one domain expire and redirect requests to a different domain.

Or am I not getting what you want to do? If not, let me know with an example.

The easiest thing you can do is host the domains here and use the exact same structure that's already in place.

When you open an account here, you'll have your own home directory, like /home/your-user-name/, which will contain directories for each domain you add.

So, you could have /home/your-user-name/domain1.com

If you put a folder in the domain1.com directory called images, that will be the same as domain.com/images works for you now. Even if your host has a different structure, like /home/user/public_html/domain.com or anything like that.

Let me know if that helps, or maybe post a specific example of what you want to do.