Website Addresses

Ebe_Scrooge

Being a bit of a numpty when it comes to the Internet, I'm sure this question has a simple answer, but anyway .....

Up until recently, if I wanted to to go to a website that had a .com suffix, I could just type in, say "moneysavingexpert" into the address bar and Firefox would take me there. Now, however, I get taken to an "Open DNS page" : http://guide.opendns.com/?url=moneysavingexpert. This displays a Google-like search results page, from where I can click to the relevant site. So I'm back to the old method of having to type in the full "www.moneysavingexpert.com".

I recently changed my ISP from Virgin to Orange, I'm assuming that's what's done it. Is there a way to get it back so that I can just enter the shortened verion of the URL ? It saved so much time :-) Many Thanks.

KingL

Never heard of it, but it seems you can opt-in to use it here: http://www.opendns.com/

kwikbreaks

The reason it is happening is because you are using the OpenDNS nameservers.

I think it is very unlikley that an ISP wouldn't be running their own nameservers rather than just passing you the OpenDNS IPs. It could be that Orange are cheapskating by no longer running their own nameservers (they certainly play cheapskates by having far more users that they have capacity to support so I guess it is possible) but are you certain that nobody has changed this on your router or PC?


BTW you need a static IP to make use of OpenDNS options. They do supply software which is supposed to support dynamic IPs but I found that their support for these is flawed when trying to make use of it myself.