I'm sure this is silly, but I'm confused about add-on domains. I would like to host 3 domains of mine separately under the same hosting account. I have small needs, about 100 MB max space total.

Responses to a post I made last week stated:

"When you start comparing hosts/plans, you will want to look at "addon domains" (as they are commonly called). These allow you to host another domain from a subdirectory of the main website."

and

"...a true addon domain will display only the full domain name "www.domain.com" not as sub domain of your primary"

Responses to inquiries I've made with prospective hosts seem to indicate that an add-on domain would simply point to a subdirectory of my main domain. I.e., typing in 'www.domain2.com' would send you to 'www.domain1.com/domain2/'. But I don't want to show domain1 in connection with domain2.

Am I missing something? Do I need a multi-domain plan? Can this be done with a reputable host for $8/mo or less? (I haven't seen many that offer multiple domains outside a 'business' or reseller plan for $$$.)

Clarifications/suggestions would be much appreciated. Thx!

yeah... usually most hosting companies on all 'standard' packages only support one domain... you usually need a multi domain package. I think this is right...(sorry if it isnt!)

Hello,

Heres a simple and easy description of an add on domain. (Btw, its called add on domain in Cpanel and since most hosts use Cpanel thats the name bestowed upon it) When you buy a hosting plan you get the space, bandwidth and the features. One of those features is add on domains. You can set up an add on domain in your control panel. What this means is that you order say www.yourseconddomain.com and then you forward it to your Host's DNS. Then you go to your control panel and say I want www.yourseconddomain.com to actually be www.primarydomain.com/seconddomain. So now, what you have is www.primarydomain.com displaying the root of your webspace and yourseconddomain.com displaying /seconddomain/.
Some hosts come with unmetered add on domains which means that you can add a reasonable amount of add on domains. Some others put a strict number and say you can only have 5.

As for the reputable host part. It depends what you mean by reputable... but you could probably get small space and bandwidth for that price (at a reputable host). Maybe try putting in a request on the requests forum?

Thank you,

Arvand Sabetian

As an answer to ataylor and to clear it up.

You do not need a multi domain account (WHM - otherwise called a reseller account) to be able to do this. Any standard account that comes with Cpanel should do it. (as long as the host will offer it)

Regards,

Arvand Sabetian

I must be a little slow on the uptake. What URL appears in the user's browser? www.yourseconddomain.com or www.primarydomain.com/yourseconddomain/ ???

Try posting in the web host request section. Then you can do a search here on WHT about the hosts that repond with offers.

Originally posted by Arvand
As an answer to ataylor and to clear it up.

You do not need a multi domain account (WHM - otherwise called a reseller account) to be able to do this. Any standard account that comes with Cpanel should do it. (as long as the host will offer it)

Regards,

Arvand Sabetian
ah... Is Ensim capable of "addon domains"?

No, not by default, but if the host allows it, you can merge the plans into a "family plan"

thats what I got confused with :P *kicks self*

Originally posted by web slinger
I must be a little slow on the uptake. What URL appears in the user's browser? www.yourseconddomain.com or www.primarydomain.com/yourseconddomain/ ???

Anyone?

The brower would show www.yourseconddomain.com.

How does this work? Does it apply for subdirectories of www.yourseconddomain.com?

yes it should. I do not have any live samples right now. maybe someone else does.

Don't worry - nobody answered my question on this, too (a while back, elsewhere).

LET ME GUESS, YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT cPANEL'S FEATURE? Blah, I hate that feature.

Both of those will work.
- www.yourseconddomain.com AND
- www.primarydomain.com/yourseconddomain

Essentially "yourseconddomain.com" launches from a subdirectory of "primarydomain.com." I've experimented with this and it works.

Originally posted by web slinger
I must be a little slow on the uptake. What URL appears in the user's browser? www.yourseconddomain.com or www.primarydomain.com/yourseconddomain/ ???

Web Slinger,
I should have clarified my explanation to you in your request.

An addon domain lets you host mulitple domains from one account without having to have a seperate control panel login for each domain.

So let's take this scenario.

You signup with a provider to host the domain domain1.com. The plan you signed up for included some addon domains.

So now lets say you have this relaly neat idea for a new website and decide to register the domain domain2.com.

Now, since addon domains are hosted from a subdirectory of your mainsite, you create a subdirectory to contain all the documents for your new domain. We will name the subdirectory domain2.

So before adding our addon domain, you can view all the documents for domain2 at http://www.domain1.com/domain2/

Now you go to your control panel and select to add an addon domain. You would enter the domain name (domain2.com) and the subdirectory that houses the documents for this site (domain2).

Once that is done, you use www.domain2.com to access the new addon domain and it operates just like your first domain does (ie: the user always sees www.domain2.com followed by whatever html document is open, just like normal).

I hope that helps clarify the feature a little bit better. If not, post again and I will try to clarify a little more ;)

That clears things up. Thx very much!

I've been watching this thread as I've recently taken out a hosting account that allows me to add-on five "add-on" domains.
From this thread I've worked out the following:

I have domain1.com

And add-on domains will appear as subfolders of the main domain.
Example:

domain1.com/domain2
domain1.com/domain3
domain1.com/domain4

So on and so forth.
Once the domain has been officially added as an "add-on" domain via CPANEL and then the nameservers changed on the domain itself I can do:

www.domain2.com and everything will work itself out.

I wonder if anybody can tell me how FrontPage copes with this?
Obviously if a friend of mine was actually owning domain2 it appears in my account as:
domain1.com/domain2

Would he be able to upload from FrontPage directly to http://domain2.com or would he have to be uploading to the sub-directory of the main account ie http://domain1.com/domain2

Basically, can anybody answer how FrontPage copes with add-on domains and where exactly you would tell FrontPage to publish to with regards the add-on domains?

Thanks.

Being that I don't use FP I can only assume on this one

My guess is that you tell FP the domain name and what directory to place the files in on the server, right?

I also assume FP uses FTP to connect to the server.

You can create a new ftp account for the addon domain (just give the ftp username the name of the directory. ie: domain2)

Or, you can just connect with your main ftp account and tell it to publish to /domain2 instead of /

That is how Dreamweaver works anyhow...