I'm not a system administrator, but I believe that the only way for the user to keep his current URLs and not have them simply forwarded to your site would be for him to transfer his domain to your Elgg server.

Then you could use .htaccess rewrite rules to map his URLs onto your Elgg site.

Unfortunately, I think that users who logged-in using your domain name would appear to be logged-out using his domain and vice versa.

If it was simply a matter of forwarding his URLs to your URLs, he could do that on his own server using .htaccess.

If I'm wrong, someone please correct me! I'd like to learn more about URL rewriting as well.

name server

Thank you both - I'm not sure I'd like to do it via .htaccess as if many users request it the .htaccess file would become rather unwieldy.  I'll ask the server admin guys and see if they can do anything about the logged in thing.

Dhrup, on their server or ours?

i'm not sure if you've explained the details of what you really want to do.

e.g ==>
*    what is "mapped" to your "folders" ?
*    what is "blogging with us"

registrar --> dns settings --> lookup => nameserver --> host server --> apache --> vhosts --> doc root --> index.php --> elgg --> elgg-db --> ;-) | ;-( ?

you following ?

If a user signs up to our network and wants to use it for their blog their address is currently www.elggdomain.com/pg/blog/username - which is very longwinded to tell folks or even remember for some people.

A user wants to use his domain so his domain when typed in would go to the location that is www.elggdomain.com/pg/blog/username.  A post url is for example: http://www.elggdomain.com/pg/blog/username/read/793/post-title.  I'd like it so his domain would replace the "http://www.elggdomain.com/pg/blog/username/" in that so it would be www.hisname.com/read/793/blog-title. 

I am with you about changing the nameserver with his host to point to our ip, but the apache bit lost me rather - I've never done any server admin like that I'm afraid.

just forward the domain name to "http://www.elggdomain.com/pg/blog/username/ this should be done at the domaine's registrar the only other way to do it is a 301 redirect.

@Pete,

Elgg will block hisname.com/ from accesses --> you'll need some smarty custom code to allow hisname.com to have access to the Elgg stuff at elggdomain.com if you want to retain hisname.com identity

I think I will go with the domain forwarding then, thanks, as while I'd willingly do it as a one off - it would be far too much effore to do it for every user that wants it.