Visser Labs

This is the second part in an ongoing series on creating your own kick ass website using available online tools and learning how it all works as we go. Get on board, subscribe to the full feed and tell your friends!

Overview

Covered in the first part, Registering and Setup of a New Domain (to be published shortly), we have already covered:

1. what makes a popular domain
2. purchasing and registering our very own domain
3. purchasing our very own hosting account
4. updating our domain record to point to our hosting account

An ‘addon domain’ allows you to host additional domains from a single hosting account. In my case this means I can host michaelvisser.com.au, redblock.com.au, 87purpleelephants.com… all on the same server. This saves you money - by not purchasing individual hosting accounts - and makes for dead simple site maintenance!

Logging into cPanel

Let’s start by logging into cPanel, the back-end administration software for our hosting account. Put simply, cPanel is our interface to the server, instead of dealing with difficult Apache configuration files and managed services cPanel harnesses this through an easy-to-use and robust web engine! This means less headaches for us and more time doing other cool stuff. Pretty sweet hey, let’s get to it!

Connect to cPanel by typing in your domain and appending the port 2082 to the domain address. This is typed as “:2082″, so for my site this is “http://michaelvisser.com.au:2082″.

You’ll be prompted for a username and password, this is to stop anyone else from modifying your domain. Refer to your hosting confirmation email for account details.

Welcome to cPanel. Your window should look something like this…

Creating an Addon Domain

Under the group Domains click on Addon Domains. Exemplar below…

Within Create an Addon Domain fill in your new addon domain details, this means:

• New Domain Name - The name of your domain (eg. michaelvisser.com.au)
• Subdomain/Ftp Username - Your new addon domain’s FTP username, this field is auto-filled (eg. michaelvisser)
• Document Root - Where within your hosting account the addon domain will reside, this field is auto-filled (eg. /public_html/michaelvisser.com.au
• Password - The FTP password for your new FTP user account
• Password (Again) - You guessed it, confirmation of your new FTP user account password

Check you entered the correct details and are happy with them then click Add Domain!

If all went as planned, you should see the following. If not, follow the instructions laid out in Registering and Setup of a New Domain (to be published shortly), if that fails you let me know through the comment section at the end of this article.

You can now go to your domain address (eg. michaelvisser.com.au) and it will be redirected to your new empty addon domain.

Connect to your addon domain using FTP

This parts dead easy, download an FTP program to manage your hosted files. I use SmartFTP Client, it’s what I live by. I’ll elaborate more about this software soon, it’s smokin’!

Connect to your host by entering your domain address in the Address field, followed by the addon domain’s FTP username and password. If you have forgotten these details - I know, it happens… - go back to cPanel and create a new FTP user account through FTP Accounts.

You are now able to create new files, folders and most importantly host files on your new addon domain. Refresh your domain address in your browser, very cool!

Conclusion

That’s it, we’re done! In the next part of this series in making your own website we’ll be exploring Content Management Systems, how to manage Apache hosting accounts and how PHP websites work. Stay tuned, subscribe to the full feed so you know when the third addition is available.

I’m eager to hear how everyone went! Join you again very soon.

- Visser