What Is URL Scheme?

Why It Matters

The scheme determines whether the connection is encrypted. This is the critical distinction for domain forwarding:

• http://your-domain.com — unencrypted, most registrars handle this
• https://your-domain.com — encrypted, most registrars fail here

Modern browsers default to HTTPS, which means the https:// scheme is the first thing attempted.

Common URL Schemes

The scheme is part of the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) standard. For web forwarding, only HTTP and HTTPS schemes are relevant:

Scheme	Purpose	Used in Forwarding?
https://	Encrypted web	Yes — primary
http://	Unencrypted web	Yes — legacy
ftp://	File transfer	No
mailto:	Email links	No
tel:	Phone links	No

Scheme in Forwarding

When configuring a redirect, both the source and destination have a scheme:

Source:      https://old-domain.com/page
             └─┬──┘
             scheme (handled by Domain Forward's SSL)

Destination: https://new-domain.com/page
             └─┬──┘
             scheme (your target site's SSL)

Domain Forward handles the source scheme — providing TLS certificates for HTTPS. The destination scheme is whatever your target URL uses.