my domain resolves to my ip in address bar

my friend bought a domain for us off of godaddy.com and set it to forward to the ip address of his comp(hes hosting a site). so when u type in <www.hissite.com> it brings u to the site but it changes from the domain name to <xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx> in the url bar. he doesnt really want to be giving his ip address out to anybody who stumbles accross his site(even if it is easy to figure out anyway), and it takes away from the coolness of having a doman name. anybody know what the deal is with this?

The Internet only work with IP address... When you buy a domain, you just buy a name that is easier to remember that a bunch number to type. Their absoulutely nothing your friend can do to hide is IP address. Even if the address bar wouldn't change to is IP, is very easy to get a site IP.

Call your domain hoster.... and when you type the domain, the site still shows up right? So whats the difference if it changes into an Ip after....

Hey Hey,

You've basically answered your own question. He setup a forward. The reason it converts to his IP is because the forward doesn't resolve to his IP, it's just saying, "Oh... you've requested this and I know when I see that request I'm supposed to pass it on to here." As an example I've used tinyurl. They take long website names and shrink them down to simpler, shorter forwards. Making them easier to remember and access. My example uses www.google.ca (which is too short to be effective in reality, but works well for us here). The result when I creatd the tinyurl was http://tinyurl.com/48b. Open this link and you will see Google loads and your address bar changes to Googles address. This is because it's simply forwarding the data. If he wants the hostname to remain in the address bar, he'll have to do a DNS entry for his domain. Having it resolve to his IP address. Then it's basically like Dynamic DNS. The best way I've found for doing this (sometimes it takes too long for your DNS to update depending on your host), is to register a dynamic DNS with someone (I use www.dtdns.com). Then go to whomever is doing your DNS Hosting and setup a CNAME entry... this will point the domain name, to yoru dynamic DNS hostname. Then your Dynamic DNS hostname will point to your IP. This way you can get software from the dynamic DNS provider that will change the IP everytime your IP address changes, so you never really have to worry about it. Also since it all resolves, it'll show up that way in your address bar.

Here's an example to understand (don't worry about seeing the IP address... I monitor it constantly...so I'll see if you try and play)...

I have the hostname reguly.darktech.org registered with dtdns.com.
reguly.darktech.org points to my IP address (resolve it if you want it) and is updated whenever my IP changes.
now reguly.com, anewerairc.net and rawspot.com are both registered domain names owned by friends of mine and they have given me subdomains. They've each taken a subdomain (tyler.reguly.com, reguly.anewerairc.net and licked.avril.lavignes.rawspot.com) and pointed them (using CNAME entries) to reguly.darktech.org.. now whenever you browse to either of those addresses (or even the dtdns.com hostname (reguly.darktech.org)) the address stays up, because it actually resolves, it's not just forwarding.

Hopefully that explained things, if you want me to clear things up more let me know.

Peace,
HT

so, there would be a "resolve to" option on his godaddy account somewhere, right? he just has to use that instead of the forwarding?

Hey Hey,

It wouldn't be "resolve to".... It'd be DNS Settings or Edit DNS Configuration or anything like that.

Peace,
HT