How to add another domain to your hosting

The great thing about many of the web hosting packages you'll find, is that they allow you to host multiple domains on the one hosting account. This means that you don't need to buy separate hosting for each and every one of your domains, saving yourself between $4 - 20 a month.

Every little bit helps!

But the big question is... how do you add another domain? It's not as obvious as it sounds!

First things first... you need to have purchased the domain. It won't work if you don't own it just yet! So go out and grab that domain from your registrar of choice. We recommend GoDaddy.com or NameCheap.com for purchasing domain names.

I'm going to demonstrate using the cPanel on my HostGator account. Many web hosts provide cPanel on their accounts, because it makes administration tasks more user friendly, so even if you're not using HostGator you can probably follow this method too. You can usually access your cPanel by going:

http://www.EXAMPLE.COM/cpanel/ (Where "example.com" is your own website)

You'll be asked to log in: Use the login name and password that your hosting company gave you when you signed up for their hosting.

The next part is pretty easy. Just scroll down the page until you see something that looks like this:

Click on "Addon Domains"

You'll see a pretty intimidating looking form that you have to fill in. Luckily, most of it gets automatically filled in. All you really have to do is enter the domain name you'd like to add (into the top box, where I've written "example.com") and the next two boxes will be automatically filled for you. Easy peasy!

Now just choose a good password for yourself. (it can be the same as the password for your main account... it's only really needed if you're going to be FTPing directly to this location, and most of the time you can just connect to your main site and navigate your way to the location yourself anyway.)

Click "Add domain"

It might take a little while for the next screen to show up... have patience! You'll soon see a message saying that your domain has been added.

But you're not finished just yet!

The next step is to link your domain with your hosting by setting your nameservers.

That sounds painful, but it basically just means that you're linking your hosting and your domain name together. You might think that you've already done that in the previous step, but there are TWO parties involved in this business: Your domain name, and your hosting. You need to tell both of them that they're going to be shacking up together.

So far we've informed the hosting. Now you need to tell the domain name about it's new partner!

We've actually created a video on this in Affilorama... you can check it out here.  Make sure you perform this step though! It won't work without it!

Once you've performed this little step... you won't be able to go to your domain straight away. It takes a little while for the rest of the internet to learn about this new relationship, (between 4 and 24 hours) and if you try to access it before then you'll just be told that the domain doesn't exist. Have patience! It will be done!

How to upload things to this new domain

You might be wondering how to actually get your content onto this new website. The If you're using an FTP program like FileZilla, the easiest way is to just navigate into the right directory when you connect to your site. Inside your public_html folder you'll see a new folder called "example.com". (Except it'll be the name of your new domain.) This is the content for your website! Just double-click on the folder to open it, and you can upload things into it like normal!