Web Domains: Forwarding a .ru

Here’s something we didn’t know… apparently it’s not possible to buy a .ru web domain, and use Domain Forwarding to redirect traffic to another website. We’re putting these notes together to see if anyone else has experienced this.

The Issue

One of our customers asked us to create a .ru (Russian) web domain to forward to their existing .eu web domain – the aim being for traffic to www.customername.ru to be forwarded to www.customername.eu/russian

The domain name was purchased via GoDaddy, who was offering the .RU domain for £10 per year – much cheaper than man of the UK-based domain name companies.

The registration took a long time – longer than the quoted 72 hours, and when it finally get registered and was showing the “This domain is registed to a GoDayy customer” landing page, it wasn’t possible to set up the forwarding – the domain was in a pending state.

GoDaddy Domain Management screen for a .ru

After a 30 minute call to the lovely Kim at GoDaddy tech Support in Arizona, it seems that there is a restriction on .ru Russian domains that the Russian Registrar doesn’t allow domain forwarding.

The Solution

GoDaddy’s suggestion is to use DNS to redirect the domain to the server hosting the site, and to set up a new domain account on the hosting server that points to the appropriate Russian page on the server.

GoDaddy – Changing DNS settings

A little bit of a faff, but at least it’s a workaround.

We’re publishing this for information for anyone who comes across the same problem.

Any comments or thoughts on this, please add a comment below.