Multi-Domain Hosting

Many reputable website hosting companies offer hosting packages that permit you to host more than one web site under a single account.

Add-On Domains

The most common approach for multi-site hosting is to offer the option of "add-on domains." An add-on domain is an additional domain that is hosted under your primary web site hosting account. Typically, the domain will be physically located inside a subdirectory inside your main hosting account website document root. Add-on domains share the resources — and limits — of the parent hosting account: bandwidth, disk space, e-mail accounts, databases, and so forth. But the add-on domain will be accessible at its own separate domain name, and will have its own ftp accounts, site traffic statistics.

In a cPanel hosting package, you create the add-on domain in your main cPanel control panel. Just look for the "Addon Domains" option in your main cPanel screen. You enter the domain name, the name of a directory in which the add-on domain should be created (don't create the directory first; cPanel creates the directory when it creates the add-on domain), and a password. cPanel will create the directory, add an entry to the server's host configuration file to point the domain to that directory, and will create an ftp account for the domain. The ftp login will use the format "directory@example.com" and the password you entered. So if you have your primary hosting at example.com and you create an addon domain example2.com, using the directory name example2 and the password mypass, you would set your ftp program to log in to ftp.example.com with the username example2@example.com and the password mypass.

You must register the add-on domain just like any other domain, and you must point the domain's nameservers (in your Registrar account) to the nameservers for your main domain.

A Word of Caution About the Search Engines and Add-On Domains

Web sites tend to perform better in Google and the other search engines if they are referenced via a single (canonical) URL. When you create an add-on domain in cPanel using the method described above, the add-on domain can be accessed in 3 different ways:

• http://www.example2.com
• http://example2.example.com (as a subdomain of your primary hosting account)
• http://www.example.com/example2/ (as a subdirectory within your primary hosting account)

This dilutes the site's "strength" in the search engines, and you should be sure to use cPanel's "redirects" feature to send requests for example.com/example2/ to the correct addon domain example2.com. You should also add an entry in your main domain's .htaccess file to redirect example2.example.com to example2.com. The .htaccess entry should look like this:

	Options +FollowSymLinks
	RewriteEngine on
	#
	# Redirect if "example2" subdomain requested
	RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example2\.example.com
	RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example2.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Add-on domains are an economical way to host multiple web sites under one hosting account, and by following these simple redirection steps, you can ensure that your domain won't suffer in the search engines.

Tip: If you need reliable, economical multi-domain hosting, HostGator offers unlimited domain hosting starting at only $9.95 a month, including all Shared Hosting plans except the smallest one.