Addon Domains are addition domains hosted in your account, stored in subfolders. System treats these domains as a subdomain to your system. If you want to run a whole different website under the same hosting plan, you can use this feature of cPanel. It is the best option to run multiple websites on a single cPanel account. For example, you have a hosting for blogging website, and you want a different website for your CV, you will not need to purchase a different hosting account, but you can use the same hosting for your CV website.
To use this feature, you will need to click Addon Domains link under your Domains section from cPanel Home.
In Addon Domains interface, you can do the following tasks.
Create an Addon Domain
To create an Addon Domain, follow these steps −
Step 1 − Find Create an Addon Domain section in Addon Domains, as shown below.
Step 2 − Fill your domain name in New Domain Name textbox.
Step 3 − Subdomains and Document Root will be automatically filled. Then you can leave the setting as it is or you can change them according to your need.
Step 4 − You can create an FTP account, which will be associated with the Addon Domain. To create an FTP account, select the checkbox on which Create an FTP account associated with this domain is written.
Step 5 − Enter FTP Username and Password to create an FTP account.
Step 6 − Click on the button “Add Domain”, if no error occurs, you will get a success message.
Remove an Addon Domain
To remove an Addon Domain, Scroll down to “Modify Addon Domain” Section and press remove link from Actions corresponding to the Addon Domain.
This interface is the advanced version of Simple Zone Editor, which we have gone through in the previous chapter. We can add, edit or delete various types of records here, which are A, AAAA, CNAME (Conical Name Record), SRV (Service Record), TXT (Text Record). We can also configure TTL (Time to Live) with records in this interface.
TTL (Time to Live) indicates the time duration that DNS servers can cache resource records prior to discarding the information.
Reset Zone Files
This option resets every change that you made in your cPanel account regarding DNS records. It also resets the changes made using Simple Zone Editor.
To reset Zone Files, follow these steps −
Step 1 − Navigate to cPanel Advanced Zone Editor by clicking on Advanced Zone Editor link found in Domains Section of cPanel Interface.
Step 2 − Find Reset Zone File and click on more link.
Step 3 − It will show you a warning that all modifications in Zone files will be erased. Select the checkbox for the Are you sure you want to erase all entries and revert to the default state?
Step 4 − Press Reset Zone File button to reset the zone file to their default state. If successful, you will see a success message shown below.
Add an A record
The ‘A’ type of resource records are Host Name records. They contain the IP address of a specific host and map the Domain Name with 32-bit IP address.
To add an A record, follow these steps.
Step 1 − Find Add a Record Section in the Advance Zone Editor.
Step 2 − Select Record ‘Type A’ from Type Dropdown Menu.
Step 3 − Enter Name of your A record. Enter TTL value, if there is no specific need, you can use default which is 14400. Also enter IP address of record in the Address textbox.
Step 4 − Click Add Record to save the record in the DNS entries.
Add an AAAA Record
The AAAA resource records bind hostnames with IPv6 Address, which is a 128-bit IP address.
Step 1 − Find Add a Record Section in the Advance Zone Editor.
Step 2 − Select Record type from AAAA the dropdown menu.
Step 3 − Enter the Hostname in the Name textbox and TTL value in the TTL textbox, unless required use default TTL value, which is 14400.
Step 4 − Enter 128-bit IPv6 address in IPv6 Address textbox to which you want your hostname to bind.
Step 5 − Click Add Record to save this AAAA record in your DNS entries.
Add a CNAME Record
CNAME records are used to add an Alias to its associated domain name. You can point multiple CNAME records to a single A record so that when the DNS looks up for the Alias, you can simply rename a host, which is defined in A records.
To add a CNAME record, please follow these steps.
Step 1 − Find Add a Record Section in the Advance Zone Editor.
Step 2 − Select Record type CNAME from dropdown menu.
Step 3 − Enter your Subdomain or Alias to Name text input, also provide TTL value in TTL textbox, unless required use default TTL value, which is 14400.
Step 4 − Enter a valid zone name or domain name to which you want this Alias to point to, in the CNAME textbox.
Step 5 − Press Add Record Button to save this CNAME record to your DNS entries.
Add an SRV Record
This resource record provides information about available services in the specific ports of your server. They associate the location of a service with details on how the service can be contacted on a specific domain. An SRV record must point to a hostname with an A record.
To add an SRV record, please follow these steps.
Step 1 − Find Add a Record Section in the Advance Zone Editor.
Step 2 − Select Record type SRV from dropdown menu.
Step 3 − Enter Name of Service and Protocol both preceded by an underscore (_) and separated by dot (.).
Step 4 − Provide TTL value in TTL textbox, unless required use default TTL value, which is 14400.
Step 5 − Provide Priority of the Service, the lower the number in priority, higher is the priority of the service. 0 (zero) has the highest priority.
Step 6 − Enter Weight of the service, it is used by zone administrators to distribute the load to multiple targets. 0 is the lowest load.
Step 7 − Enter the Port on which service is actually offered.
Step 8 − Enter Target, it is the name of the host that will receive this service.
Step 9 − Press Add Record to add this SRV record into your DNS entries.
Add a TXT Record
The TXT records can hold any type of text. A domain name can have many TXT records, most common TXT records are used to define SPF (Sender Policy Framework) or DKIM, which is used for Email Authentication.
To add a TXT record, please follow these steps.
Step 1 − Find Add a Record Section in the Advance Zone Editor.
Step 2 − Select Record type TXT from the dropdown menu.
Step 3 − Enter Valid DNS Zone name in Name textbox.
Step 4 − Provide TTL value in TTL textbox, unless required use default TTL value, which is 14400.
Step 5 − Enter TXT Data, it can be any type of text, or a SPF or DKIM data.
Step 6 − Press Add Record Button to add this TXT record to DNS records.
Edit or Delete a DNS Record
To edit or Delete a DNS record, you added earlier. Follow these steps −
Step 1 − Scroll down to Zone File Records in Advanced Zone Editor.
Step 2 − Find the DNS resource record you wish to edit or delete from the list of records.
Step 3 − To Edit an entry, click Edit Link from Action, which is corresponding to the record you wish to edit.
Step 4 − Edit your record according to your need and Click Edit Record button to save the changes.
Step 5 − To delete a record click on Delete link corresponding to the record you wish to delete.
Step 6 − You will be asked for confirmation, press Confirm button to delete the record.
This feature of cPanel allows your website to load from another domain. When a user enters the Alias Domain or Parked Domain to access the website, the cPanel automatically redirects them to your main domain and load the main website.
For Example, consider your main domain is www.mymaindomain.com and you have also bought www.myanotherdomain.com and www.mymaindomain.in, and you want to display your same website to these other domains, you have also bought. There is no need to purchase separate hosting for these domains and copy the website to these domains. You can use cPanel Aliases to point these domains to your main domain.
Create an Alias
To create an alias, you will need to follow these steps −
Step 1 − Open cPanel Aliases by clicking on the Aliases link found in Domains Section of cPanel Home.
Step 2 − In the Aliases section, you will see Create New Alias, fill your domain in the text box.
Step 3 − Press Add Domain button to add an alias, if successful you will see a success message.
Note − 1. Domain must be registered already. 2. Domain’s Nameservers must be configure to point at your cPanel account.
Remove Aliases
To remove alias created before, you need to follow these steps −
Step 1 − Navigate to Remove Aliases Section, which can be found under Remove Aliases.
Step 2 − Click on the Remove link from Actions corresponding to the Domain you want to remove and you will see the following remove prompt.
Step 3 − Click on Remove Alias Button, if successful you will see a success message.
The redirect interface allows you to send all the visitors or traffic of a Domain or a particular webpage to a new domain. For example, if you moved your website to a new domain and you want to redirect all your visitors to new website, you need to setup redirect. There are two types of redirects available −
Permanent (301) Redirect
This one redirects your visitors to a new website and updates your visitor’s bookmarks. This also directs search engines to your new website. This redirect is permeant and means that page has moved. So, the Search Engine and other crawlers update their data according to the new link. Popularity and SEO of link remains same as the old link had.
Temporary (302) Redirect
This one redirects your visitors to a new website, but does not update your visitor’s bookmark. Search Engines still index your original website. This redirect is temporary and search engine thinks that the new link is going to get removed, hence it does not have same popularity like the old link.
Create a Redirect
To create a redirect, please follow these steps −
Step 1 − Click on Redirects found in Domains section of cPanel Home.
Step 2 − Choose your redirect type from the Dropdown Menu, Permanent or Temporary Redirect.
Step 3 − Choose the Domain Name you want to redirect from the Dropdown menu of lists of domain.
Step 4 − In the next textbox, enter the path of page or path of folder you want to redirect.
Step 5 − Enter full URL of the page your domain will be redirected to, in Redirect to textbox. You will also need to specify the protocol as well, http:// or https://.
Step 6 − Select www. redirection, it determines that if you want your domain to be redirected with www or not. Explanations of options given below.
Only redirect with www.− This redirect will be done only if user has entered www. in URL.
Redirect with or without www.− This redirect will always be done, does not depends on whether user has entered www. in URL or not.
Do not redirect www.− This redirect will not work, if the user has entered www. in URL.
Choose your option accordingly, recommended is that you use Redirect with or without www.
Step 7 − Select Wild Card Redirection checkbox, if you want to redirect all files and folders in sub folder to the same file or folder in new domain. For example, with wildcard redirection www.example.com/pic.jpg will redirect to www.new–example.com/pic.jpg. Without wildcard redirection www.example.com/pic.jpg will redirect to Select the checkbox accordingly.
