Community Q&A:

How do change my account domain name?

Asked by:
datamason / 24 Points Time:
2013-08-02 12:55 am EST Category:
Domain Names Hits:
660
Currently, the main website (powered by WordPress) for our organization uses the same domain name (mydomname.net) as for our webhosthub domain name. This forces us to install the WordPress files directly in public_html (according to webhosthub support staff). Somehow this situation leaves me uncomfortable, so I wish to list a new domain name for our account, install our website in a folder off public_html and redirect our previous domain name (mydomname.net) to this subfolder. I assume that doing this redirection is trivial. So how does one change the account's URL?
Curiously, our previous hosting company did not require this step and our WordPress site was installed to a sub-folder.

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ANSWERS

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arnelc
Staff
17,314 Points
2013-08-02 2:20 am EST
Hello Datamason,

Thanks for the question. Whether you know it or not, most hosts will always have a default folder where a domain will exist. Typically, you might see it as httpdocs, or www, or, as we have it in our system, in the public_html folder. This is atypical of many hosting servers. The security of the files in public_html is the same as it would be if the folder were in a subfolder - so you do not need to worry.

In regards to the change of the primary domain name, you will need to submit an email to our live technical support department requesting a primary domain change. They will need to update your account details with the domain name change and also change the server details to match. Please review the article carefully regarding the change. I will send you an email in regards to the primary domain change after this reply is complete.

However, if you are still not comfortable with the primary domain being directly at the root of the public_html folder, you can also request to have the document root changed. This also requires an email to the live technical support team (support@webhostinghub.com). Since this is a change in the normal structure of the account files, it would need to be submitted as a request so that it is also noted in the account. Note that even with the primary domain change, the folder that contains your website will reside in the public_html folder (all published website files are within that folder).

Also, bear in mind that there will be a consequence in the resulting folder change. You will need to change the settings for your WordPress install to reflect the change. Please review our article moving a WordPress installation to a different folder. This tutorial includes the steps needed to complete the move.

One other quick note: If you send an email to the live technical support team, please make sure to include verification of your account. They use the last 4 digits of the credit card on the account or the Account Management Panel (AMP) password in order to verify. Including this information will save time, as they will request to verify should you not provide that information.

I hope this helps to clarify the issue and provide you the information you need should you wish to proceed with the change in document root and the move of the WordPress installation.

If you require any further assistance, please let us know!

Regards,
Arnel C.

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Hello Datamason,

I wanted to clarify one further thing about the document root change. I was answering a similar question and thought back to my response to you realizing that it wasn't 100% clear. If you request a document root change from our live technical support team, it means that you can define a directory outside of the public_html folder for your website - if that is your wish.

If you setup other websites on the account using the ADD-ON domain feature, you can also define the path so that it's not within the public_html folder. The main limitation is that the folder will still exist within your account folder path. For example:

/home/user_name5/primarydomain.com

As per my previous response, the document root change does require that you submit a request through email to support@webhostinghub.com. If you send an email to the live technical support team, please make sure to include verification of your account. They use the last 4 digits of the credit card on the account or the Account Management Panel (AMP) password in order to verify. Including this information will save time, as they will request to verify should you not provide that information.

I hope this helps to further define the issue! Apologies for being a little vague in my previous answer.

Regards,
Arnel C.
arnelc
17,314 Points
Staff
2013-08-02 11:00 pm EST
It is not just security but also keeping clutter out of the public_html folder. Also, I use a WordPress plugin to backup the website, and now it is unfortunately including all other folders off of public_html. My backups have doubled in size just for this reason. ///

Since I am talking about a live website, I need to make sure I have every step fully understood, so I can perform the whole thing fully over the weekend without errors or unforseen consequences. ///

The goal: If my current domain = domainA, I wish to redirect domainA to public_html/subdirA. ///

plan 1) I suppose I could do a redirect without changing the primary domain name (is this correct, please explicitly confirm). But as I also have other WordPress sites (for internal use) off public_html, would I call them up from my browser using my temp URL as the basis for the URI?///

plan 2) Or I could continue with my original plan of obtaining a new domain name (domainZ -- which likely would be only for internal use) to set to public_html and set domainA to public_html/subdirA. The latter plan seems less likely to face unforseen Murphy's law consequences.
datamason
24 Points

2013-08-02 11:40 pm EST
Hello Datamason,

It appears that there is still some confusion. First, as per my last post, I wanted to clarify that you did NOT have to include everything in the PUBLIC_HTML folder as long as you requested a document root change. This means you can designate the main domain to be stored in a separate folder elsewhere.

Second, the primary domain change can be done, but in EITHER CASE - the document root change or the primary domain name change- you will need to adjust your settings in WordPress to reflect the change in domain name or the change in path. Failure to do this and your Wordpress installation(s) will not work.

I would suggest you get a different backup plugin, but the one I like is not free: Backup buddy is $80 for 2 licenses. That one allows you to make folder exclusions so that the backups include only what you want them to include. There's a good list of backups in this article. In fact BackWPup is free and gives you control over the folders that are backed up. That would help you keep the size of those backups down, if that's one of your issues.

Of course, you can still move the installation folders around like you've been asking and that would also solve the issue you're stating. One last note - you can't really just "re-direct" WordPress URLs, but you can change them in the WordPress settings. The WordPress application settings must be involved in the change of path. Making the change only as a server re-direct will cause the Wordpress application to not function since it automatically generates the links for all of the pages.

I hope this clears up the issue! Please let us know if you any further questions or comments.

Regards,
Arnel C.
arnelc
17,314 Points
Staff
2013-08-03 12:51 am EST
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