Question : Redirect URL to External Server keep domain name in Address Bar

I am currently moving a website from one host to another and have a problem.  The website is physically not relocating from the 3rd party where it resides.  I need to redirect the www.bluemoutainhonda.com to www.hondadealers.ca\bluemountainhonda without the users seeing the redirect.  I am doing it now with a .htaccess file which works but I want the original domain (www.bluemountainhonda.com) to show in the address bar after the redirect occurs.  I have been talking to "technical support reps" at the new hosting company, who are no help at all.  What exactly should I tell them to do to fix this?

Answer : Redirect URL to External Server keep domain name in Address Bar

Perfect.  Thank you for the clarification.

There was another question about this recently, so I'm going to borrow my own comment from there:

"If you regsitrar offers DNS services, you will be able to use their configuration to forward your domain.  Some, but not all, registrars that offer DNS services also offer some form of domain masking or cloaking along with their forwarding service.  This would accomplish what you are looking for.  Precisely how to do the configuration itself depends on what registrar you end up with.

If you haven't selected a registrar yet, take a look at www.godaddy.com.  I have a number of domains registered there and can confirm that they offer this service.  Their prices are competitive (.info names are $6.95/year) and I have always found them to be reliable and easy to deal with.  Also, if you register your domain there, I can walk you through the steps when you are ready to configure this.

If you end up with a different registrar, ie. one that does not offer these sorts of services, you can use a third-party DNS service that does, like www.zoneedit.com, for example.

However, there is one very important side-note to all of this.  Search engines are not fond of cloaking.  If you use this method on a long-term basis, you will likely end up with some sort of penalty or even having your site banned from any (relevant) search engine listing."

(source - www.experts-exchange.com/Q_21435415.html )

The warning about search engines is something you should consider.  One important way to deal with this is to make sure that the destination website (in this case www.hondadealers.ca/bluemountainhonda) is not accessible to the search engines.  In this case, the destination site is already listed on Google.  Therefore, setting this up will mean the site as seen with your new domain will be considered duplicate content by Google and will either be penalized or simply not listed.

The masking/cloaking itself is unlikely to be relevant provided that you don't use it to include hidden pages intended to be seen by the search engines and not your users.