Adding Domains

[BulaRae]

I am a new customer to SDX as of a few hours ago. I have about 30 sites I need to move to my new account. When I went to add domains it tells me I can't add them until I point the nameservers of those domains to here!

WTH? I can't point the nameservers until the sites are moved or the sites will go down and I need to create them so I can copy them over, so what am I missing?

[EastonRoyce]

Create directories for your other website to reside in. Download them from their original locations, upload them to the new locations. When you are ready, change the name servers of your domains to point to your SDX. When you add the domains, point them to the directories you created.

1. Create new directories on your SDX account. EG: newdomain.com - create a directory called newdomain-com
2. Download current newdomain.com website from its current location.
3. Upload newdomain.com website freshly downloaded to newdomain-com directory on your SDX account. Don't forget to download and upload the databases if you have any.
4. Change the name servers of newdomain.com to point to the name servers for your SDX account
5. Add newdomain.com to your SDX account, and when asked where to store it, point it to directory newdomain-com

Hope this helps!

[BulaRae]

Thank you. But pointing them to the directories won't make redirects necessary, will it? My old host had each domain at the root of my account, including the one I signed up wtih. With this it looks like mydomain.com is the root of public_html so if I'm creating new directories for new domains won't they then be subdirectories of mydomain.com?

[EastonRoyce]

No, you won't need redirects. Your directory structure would be something like this:

public_html - accessible by primarydomain.com
-------+newdomain-com - accessible by newdomain.com
-------+otherdomain-com - accessible by otherdomain.com

[jason]

To clairify what Easton said, what you want to do is create subdomains in cPanel for each of the add-on domains. That will create a subdirectory in your public_html directory for that subdomain. Upload your files to that subdirectory and test your site using http://subdirname.maindomain.com.

When you are ready to make the switch, first switch the DNS, then go into the add-on domains section of cPanel and use the same name as you used for the subdomain in the "subdomain/ftp username" field. That will park your domain name on top of the subdomain, allowing you to access the site with the real domain name as soon as DNS propagation occurs.

The reason for this restriction is just simple security. Only allowing domains that are pointed at JPC-controlled nameservers to be set up by clients prevents domain hijacking and phishing attempts. Support can also override this restriction manually--if for some reason following this approach will not work for you, open a support ticket and ask that the add-on domain be created manually.

--Jason

[BulaRae]

Hi There:

Thanks Easton and Jason for your help. So I have changed my DNS today. I hope that doing it on the weekend is better than during the week. I've had a terrible week with my site anyway and have lost hundreds in business, so I figure it's a good time to make the move.

I set up the subdomain like you suggested, Jason, but I'm still kinda confused by how it works without a redirect (that the search engines won't see it as a redirect).

In the meantime, while I'm waiting for it to propagate, I am unclear on how specifying paths and using SSL plays into this.

Will my paths include the subdomain directory or not? The particular cart I'm using is Zen Cart and it asks me to specify the http and https servers. On my old host it was just http://mydomain.com and I didn't have to deal with a public_html folder.

Do I treat the public_html like it's invisible? Here is what my config is asking for. Should the regular server path be http://mysite.com/subdomaindirectory?

define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://mysite.com');
define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'https://argonaut.nocdirect.com/~myuser');
define('HTTP_CATALOG_SERVER', 'http://mysite.com');
define('HTTPS_CATALOG_SERVER', 'https://argonaut.nocdirect.com/~myuser');

Is my shared SSL like this?: https://argonaut.nocdirect.com/~myus...ninpublichtml/

My old hosting it was simply hostingsite.mysite.com

So on this setup, I'm unsure as to what it should look like cuz the cert directory is already in that format.

Thanks much

[Gwaihir]

Yes, the whole "/home/yourusername/public_html/" is invisible from the web.

Apparently you had no off-web space at your old host? What you refer to as "the root of your (old) account" is here at JagPC your public_html folder. Everything above public_html is not accessible from the web. (There are great (security) advantages to having such non-web space available in your account. Any decent host ought to offer it..)

[jason]

I set up the subdomain like you suggested, Jason, but I'm still kinda confused by how it works without a redirect (that the search engines won't see it as a redirect).

It has to do with how the web server software is set up. In the case of JPC that software is the Apache web server, but details are pretty much the same with any other software. Basically you define what is known as a document root for each domain name hosted on the server--this is simply the location where Apache should look for requested files when it receives a request for that domain--each domain (or subdomain) has its own document root defined. On JPC's servers primary domains have a document root at /home/USERNAME/public_html and subdomains are at /home/USERNAME/public_html/SUBDOMAIN. The location is completely arbitrary--web sites and search engines have no way of knowing where the files are physically stored on the server nor can they tell that any two sites are somehow related.

Say you have a file called file.html. In order to access that page on your main site you'd simply put it in public_html and call it through http://yoursite.com/file.html. For the subdomain you'd place the file in public_html/subdomain and access it through http://subdomain.yoursite.com/file.html.

In the meantime, while I'm waiting for it to propagate, I am unclear on how specifying paths and using SSL plays into this.

For SSL, if you are using the server's shared certificate you'll use https://servername.nocdirect.com/~username/file.html (for the main site) and https://servername.nocdirect.com/~username/subdomain/file.html. If you've purchased your own SSL certificate you'll use the same URL as for your primary site, just with https. For the subdomain you can use https://yourdomain.com/subdomain/file.html.

Hope this helps.

--Jason