[thelist] Host ~ Redirection - Imp. and Suggestions...

[Morbus Iff]

Hey there.

I'm thinking of offering a redirection service off of one of my sites, where
people could choose a custom URL from my domain, and it would redirect the
visitor to the true URL (on geocities, or whatever). Something to the effect
of:

 if you type in:    you go to:
 ---------------    ----------
 .com/~devilbox     .com/super/evil/22145/longurl.htm
 .com/~pinklady     .com/super/evil/never/gets/the/girl/22145/index.htm

What I would like to ask the list:

 - have you done this before? do you know of any articles that have
   been written about this, either analysis, whether it
   increased traffic and awareness, or what have you.

 - I'll probably be coding my administrative front-end, but if you
   have suggestions on software that automates a user logging in
   and changing the redirection, please lemme know.

 - how do you feel about branding the redirection? obviously,
   when you go to a geocities site, you see ads. when you go
   to other sites, there are interstitials to annoy you. and
   some sites will stick a top frame bar on the page itself:
   http://gamers.com/framelink/1066307 (in this example,
   the gamers.com topbar is what I'm talking about). i'd like
   to explore doing this topbar frame thingy - if I did, it
   would be very minimal - like the gamers.com bar. there
   would be no interstitials or ads.

Thoughts?

-- 
Morbus Iff ( god less america )
http://www.disobey.com/ && http://www.gamegrene.com/
read me: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2001/12/07/apache.html
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