Forwarding a .al domain

When forwarding makes sense

A redirect automatically sends the visitor from one address to another. For .al domains, the most common cases are:

• You registered both .al and .com.al to protect the name and want both to open the same site.
• The Albanian-character variant — the brand contains ë or ç and you registered the variant without them too.
• Rebranding — the business changed its name and the old domain should lead to the new one.
• A campaign or product — a short domain leading to a specific page of the main site.

In all these cases the goal is the same: one main site, every other domain pointing to it.

301 or 302 redirect

Web redirects differ by the code the server returns. The right choice matters, especially for search engines.

For almost every domain redirect, choose 301. It tells search engines that the new address is the real one and that the old address's signals should pass to it.

Option 1: redirect from the hosting panel

This is the cleanest approach. The extra domain points to the same hosting and the server returns the redirect.

1. Point the extra domain to the hosting, with the hosting nameservers or an A record, following the hosting guide.
2. In cPanel, add it as an addon domain or as an alias of the main domain.
3. Open the Redirects section, choose type Permanent (301), the source domain and the full destination address, e.g. https://yourname.al/.
4. Choose whether the redirect applies with and without www.

If you are on an Apache server and prefer full control, the same result can be achieved with a few lines in the .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yourname\.al$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://yourname.al/$1 [R=301,L]

This rule sends every other name pointing to this hosting, including www and extra domains, to the main domain and keeps the page path.

Option 2: with DNS records

It is important to understand that DNS on its own does not redirect addresses. It only says which server a name lives on. A CNAME record, for example, makes www use the same server as the root domain, but the browser keeps showing the address the visitor typed.

@     A       203.0.113.10
www   CNAME   yourname.com.al.

So DNS's role in forwarding is to point all domains to the same server, while the 301 redirect is set on that server. With UpFlare's free managed DNS you can add these records from the client area without changing nameservers. If you have no hosting for the extra domain, contact support about the forwarding options.

SEO impact and mistakes to avoid

If the same site opens from both yourname.al and yourname.com.al without a redirect, search engines see two copies of the same content. Links and authority are split between them and neither ranks as well as a single site could.

• Pick one main domain and use it everywhere: on the site, in marketing materials and on social profiles.
• Redirect page by page — keep the path, so /contact leads to /contact and not just the home page.
• Avoid chains — http to www, then to https, then to the other domain. A single hop is faster and clearer.
• A certificate for the extra domain too — a visitor typing https://yourname.com.al must get a valid certificate before the redirect; see the SSL guide.
• Do not let them expire — a forwarding domain must be renewed just like the main one.

Frequently asked questions