How to Host Multiple Websites on Single Shared Hosting Server

How to Host Multiple Websites on Single Shared Hosting Server

Host Multiple Websites

Shared web hosting is undoubtedly the best when it comes to perspective of a newbie web-based professional; let it be a blogger, web developer or internet marketer, who is looking forward to earn from World Wide Web. And, there are a huge number of web hosting providers that offer top-notch shared web hosting services, including HostGator and Bluehost! Nevertheless, one of the notable disadvantages of shared web hosting is the fact that basic plan of most of shared hosting plans lets you host single domain name and it is a problem for those, who want to have many sites or blogs. In most cases, what restrains them from doing so is tightness of their budget! If you are one of those, we have a solution for you, to host multiple domain names in single-domain-based shared hosting plan. Well, that does sound quite funny, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, we have a solution that is powerful enough to, in a way, betray your web host, which wants you to pay some more pennies to host more domains! In this post, I will give you a systematic tutorial to use our technique to host multiple domain names in single shared account. Before we move on to actual tutorial, we should have an introduction to ZoneEdit — an advanced DNS Management service.

Host Multiple Websites

ZoneEdit

As we mentioned earlier, ZoneEdit is a way to manage your DNS records in a deeper way! When compared to actual way of managing DNS server, ZoneEdit offers plethora of features. To make use of ZoneEdit, you have to point your domain names to ZoneEdit, using provided details. And, using ZoneEdit, you can either point multiple domains to one website that is hosted in a single-domain-based shared server or point multiple domain names to multiple sites.  Firstly, we will go with the multiple domain one website method.

Pointing Multiple Domains to Single Website

  1. Using provided credentials, log in to control panel of ZoneEdit.
  2. Hit on ‘Add Zone’.
  3. Soon, ZoneEdit will provide you two nameservers and IP addresses.
  4. Open Domain Control Panel of yours and change the nameservers and paste those nameservers provided by ZoneEdit.
  5. Get back to control panel of ZoneEdit and click on ‘Edit Zone’.
  6. Hit ‘Web Forward’.
  7. Now, you will have an option to redirect the added domain to a particular destination URL. In the destination URL section, enter URL of website or blog, to which you want to redirect the new domain name.
  8. Save these settings and you can see them in action in a few seconds, minutes or hours!

Using these methods, you will be able to redirect multiple domain names to a single website that is hosted in single shared hosting server.

Pointing Multiple Domains to Multiple Websites

If your web host offers more than enough disk space to be used, you can use that disk space to store files of multiple websites. Despite the fact that your web host will be limiting number of domains to one, you can fool your host quite easily!

  1. First, you have to create a particular directory in your web server and store website files in it. For instance, if the name of extra website is example.com, you can create a directory named public_html/example. You’ve to store your website files in the directory. And, these files will be available in fully functional form when one user enters yourwebsite.com/example.
  2. Now, log in to ZoneEdit control panel and get nameservers to add new zone.
  3. Once you have added the nameservers in domain control panel, get back to ZoneEdit control panel and click on ‘Edit Zone’.
  4. There, you will be asked to give a destination URL, in Web Forward section.
  5. Paste the URL of newly created directory in Destination URL section and save settings.
  6. In a few seconds or minutes, your new website will be available under new domain.

What do you think about this sense-making solution to host multiple websites under one shared hosting? Won’t this be useful for a lot of newbie bloggers out there? We are eager to know your opinion about these.

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Written by:

Ryan Jacob

Ryan Jacob has 9 years of rich experience in Integrated Marketing Communications and Server Management. He has lead teams of professionals in his career and built online and offline reputation of organizations.

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3 COMMENTS

comments user
Bigwas

Hosting more than one domain in a shared hosting account is the only cheaper alternative to a starting blogger with little to no traffic. But once traffic begins to pick up, consider upgrading to a higher tiered plan.

comments user
Sareeka Gupta

Do all hosting companies allow hosting multiple domains on shared Hosting. are there any SEO side effects of hosting multiple domains on single shared hosting

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