We have a client wanting to host .co.za domains on a server we will be providing. They are thinking there is something special about hosting these domains. Is anyone aware of anything special about hosting these on a CentOS / Cpanel server?
This question gets asked a lot in our Helpdesk and I figured I would post our knowledgebase article here to help anyone else wondering the Pros and Cons of Unlimited Domain Shared Hosting vs. Reseller Hosting. If anyone has anything else to add, I appreciate any feedback on how we can improve our KB article.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Given the present state of shared hosting, many clients may ask "Why would I need a Reseller account if I can host unlimited Addon and Parked domains within a single shared hosting account?". There is certainly enough Disk Space and Bandwidth provided in many of today's hosting packages, so why bother to purchase a Reseller account?
Many don't realize the drawbacks of hosting large numbers of domains within a single hosting account until they've already packed tens of them onto a single package.
So how do you know whether a Reseller account or Shared Hosting account is right for you? The answer is in how you plan to provide access to others and how "mission-critical" the sites are. You should consider the following factors when deciding on hosting a large number of domains:
1. Who will be managing these sites?
2. How important is site security between sites?
3. Will these domains need dedicated SSLs?
4. How resource intensive will these sites be (RAM, CPU, MySQL)?
In a nutshell, Reseller plans are for those who wish to host websites for other sub-clients and a shared hosting package is for a single individual managing multiple personal domains. We'll go over the 4 points above in greater detail.
1. Who will be managing these site?
If you personally own multiple domains and wish to host them within the same hosting space, you can easily do so with an Addon or Parked domain. An addon domain will allow you to host a new domain within a subdirectory of your hosting space. A parked domain will allow you to have multiple domain names point to the same content. Since addon domains reside within the same user space as your main domain, you can manage all of your domains with a single login. You can see the problem if you want to provide another user with access. Since all accounts are managed with a single set of login credentials, if you give another user access to their addon domain you are also giving them access to your main domain. If you have vital information stored on your main domain and you are hosting another domain as an addon domain for someone else, you cannot provide them access to their hosting without compromising the integrity of your main domain.
When hosting sites as a Reseller, your clients in turn will want access to their account and will want exclusive rights to their disk space and server resources. With a Reseller account, each sub-account you create gets its own username, password, and isolated user space on the server. Individual clients of yours have access to their user space and their user space alone. In addition to the isolation with regards to access concerns, each account also gets their own cPanel access. All of the same great features that you use to manage your sites can also be given to your clients. Next time client Y wants to add an email account, you don't have to do it for them for fear of giving them access to your cPanel, you can simply give them their login details and they can manage their own email accounts.
2. How important is site security between sites?
This is along the same lines as point 1. This is not necessarily related to who you are hosting for, but what content you are hosting. Imagine that you are a webmaster and you are hosting your own personal site-in-a-box community forums (such as PHPBB or vBulliten) on your main domain and a company website for a paying client on an addon domain. It is not uncommon for popular scripts to have security flaws in older versions. Script authors will often update security flaws in later versions of their software. For this reason, it is very important to keep scripts up to date on your site. But let's assume you forget to update your scripts for a couple of months and an unscrupulous individual takes advantage of a well known security hole. Using this exploit, they gain access to your forums and any subdirectories. Since you are hosting another domain as an addon, they now have access to this domain's content as well. A site defacement on this company's site may not bode well for you when they are considering you for web master services in the future.
If these two domains had been separate into two individual users (i.e. two subaccounts created through a Reseller), their content would've been inherently isolated server side by Linux's user management. Sure, your forums still would've been affected by the security hole, but the break-in would've been isolated to your site alone.
Going back to our example, let's say that instead of a corporate website as an addon domain you are hosting an image gallery site for all of your cats. In this case, it may not be a big deal if a compromise in your main domain spreads to your addon domain. After all, they are both owned by you and you're only losing some time and effort to restore these sites from your local backups (which I'm sure you've actively maintained ). But then again, you are losing time and time is money. If these sites had been separated into individual users, again, you'd only have to restore one site's content.
The idea here is isolation. Reseller plans provide you with the peace of mind to know that if one of your users doesn't keep up with their site's content as actively as they should, their actions won't negatively impact the content hosted on other domains. If you and those you host in your addons are diligent webmasters, maybe this point won't have much bearing on your decision. Only you can say for sure.
3. Will these domains need SSLs?
As of this writing, SSL certificates must have a dedicated IP address to be installed. If you are hosting multiple domains on the same shared hosting package, you can still install an SSL (or purchase a dedicated IP address and install one) but you are limited to exactly one SSL on your account. If you are hosting multiple domains on the same package (and consequently the same IP), you must choose which domains gets to have the dedicated SSL.
Sub accounts of Resellers can each be placed onto separate IP addresses and, as a result, can each have their own dedicated SSL installed.
Of course, both shared accounts and Resellers' sub accounts can use the server's shared SSL free of charge. However, some clients prefer to see their domain in the URL bar when they visit https.
4. How resource intensive will these sites be (RAM, CPU, MySQL)?
We've already established that disk space and bandwidth will be no problem. But what about CPU, RAM, and MySQL resources?
It's important to be aware of the resource needs of your website. As administrators, we have to make sure all users "play nice" on the server. We can't have user X eating all of the CPU cycles computing pi to the trillionth decimal place while you are trying to serve web pages to your loyal visitors. We have to monitor the actions of all of our users and in the event someone is stepping beyond the bounds of acceptable resource consumption, we have to take action. In most cases, this entails disabling the abusive script, but in extreme cases we have to suspend the abusive user account to prevent other domains from encountering performance degradation on their sites.
If you are hosting 100 domains as addon domains, all serving nothing but static HTML pages, maybe you will stay off the radar.
But considering most sites are more complicated than static HTML, you may want to be aware of how many sites you host as addons and what content they serve. If you're hosting the latest and greatest Joomla modules, with up to date news feeds, integrated forums modules, polls, blog posts, etc your site can certainly require a degree of CPU to serve your pages. Now imagine you have 5 or 10 of these sites all hosted as addon domains. The resources these sites need to generate their content can quickly add up and before you know it you've got a friendly email from Acenet, Inc. in your inbox wondering why your user is consuming 2 of the 8 CPU cores on the server. That may be an exaggeration, but you get the idea. In the event your resource usage becomes so excessive that we have to suspend your user, now all of your sites are down instead of whichever one may be the direct cause of the spike in CPU, RAM, or MySQL consumption.
If each of these had been separate Reseller accounts, the offending account could've been suspended temporarily while we work through the cause, leaving the rest of your domains live and kicking.
The conclusion here is that you need to be aware of the needs of your sites in a general sense. Hosting unlimited domains within a shared hosting space is certainly a nice feature. For those webmasters who have multiple presences on the web, it's very convenient to be able to manage all of their personal domains from a single control panel. For those entrepreneurs who are hosting multiple domains for other individuals, the features and security associated with a Reseller plan and the inherent isolation of Linux users is a must have. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
I have 25-30 domains, mostly directories and WordPress sites, and I can no longer afford my $300/month dedicated server. Can anyone recommend a good service for < $25/month? I'd like all my domains to be called "domain.com", not "domain.maindomain.com". I'm also aware, however, of the dangers of going with a shared service that offers "unlimited" domains (and hosts thousands of them on each server).
I have around 20 odd domains which I wish to host. Im not sure how much if anything I will make of them so I wish to keep my costs down to an absolute minimum (yes even Godaddy @ $3 a month is to expensive ).
I have changed .com to .kom to avoid confusing and the no-posting url filter.
Basically, I've been googling like mad, Searching for every scrap of information I can find.. I'm not sure whether there just isn't anything covering it.. Or I don't understand it well enough to put it into practice. So I am here, Hopefully someone will know what the H*ll to do! =)
I'll try and lay this out as easy to read as possible.
THE SETUP: I run a home server. On said home server I run W.A.M.P to serve my Joomla! powered website.
I own a domain via 1and1.co.uk. I DID have it set up as a 'frame redirect' to my I.P address using their name servers.
HOW THE PROBLEM STARTED: I have all of the content and most of the configuration down. That I am fine with.
I decided to test out the automated user registration. I find that when it sends an automated E-mail out to a user. Instead of sending the authentication link as MYDOMAIN.kom/Clickhere it will send MY.IP.ADDRESS/Clickhere
This isn't a great solution. So I googled about looking on how to change it. Having visited the Joomla! forums I am now certain that the settings contained within there are right. The problem lies outwith that.
On the Joomla forums I was told I would need to set up some kind of custom DNS service. Having my Domain pointed at the DNS and letting it forward onto the I.P address. In turn, Solving my I.P E-Mail problem.
So after some more hunting around I came across SimpleDNS.
Right here is were I come to a stop, Pretty much.
According to the 1and1.ko.uk FAQ, In order to have my Domain name point to a Nameserver, I NEED to create a SUB-domain called "ns.Domainname.kom" then in turn point this SUB domain to my I.P Address.
Ok, So I done that.
Problem 1: In the Control Panel at 1and1.co.uk, In the forwarding properties of the SUB-Domain (NS). I am only allowed to put either a full Domain Name OR a "://IPADDRESS" I cannot place just the IPADDRESS. I am not sure if this is causing any issues.
After doing this, I set up the SimpleDNS like so. NAME - TYPE - DATA domainame - NS - DOMAINNAME.COM domainame - A - IPADDRESS
(I do have NS1, NS2, NS3.. However I chose to leave those out for now as it might confuse matters)
I am at a complete loss here.
I have forwared all the ports I can find that may be needed by SimpleDNS (53, 1053 and 8053)
I have changed odd things around and back again to no avail.
I registered and hosted two domains, one for my girlfriend and one for me.
I used GoDaddy, paying around $130 all together at a rate of $5 monthly.
Doing research tonight for a new domain I want to host, I come across "HostGator" which offers Unlimited Domain Hosting. (At around $7 a month)
Does this mean, if I am not mistaken, I could have payed $84 and placed my girlfriend's and my domain on the same hosting server, thus using the same bandwidth and storage space, thus saving a bit of money?
Assuming I am correct up until now, what happens if I get a hosting package that has unlimited storage space, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited domain hosting? That means the only additional cost I'd be paying for hosting a new site would be a basic $10 per year domain registration cost?
I am quite ambitious and have plans for about 3 new domain projects, and I figured I would have to purchase a new hosting account of $60+ yearly for each one. If I could combine these into one hosting account, it would save a lot of money and grief.
I've got a two domains (.com and .co.uk) at 123-reg and I've just got some new hosting. At the moment the .com points to the new hosting. How do I get the .co.uk to point there are well? The options I can find are changing nameservers (still don't understand this...) or to use web-forwarding.
i recently purchased my first vps from netdepot and want to transfer my 2 web forums from shared hosting. So what is the best and easy way to do this. I got the control panel Lxadmin and also webmin. I Switch Programed to apache and bind because i know little bit about them.
My client wants to point two domain to the same hosting account. I have already setup the first account for him and it works. How can I make it that when I change the nameserver for the 2nd domain to my server it points to the same hosting account as the 1st domain
I have about 14 domains I'd like to host on one server. They combined use about 50gb of bandwidth, 15,000-20,000 unique visitors per month. About 3-4,000 page impressions per day.
I currently use hostmonster.com and their uptime sucks, and I keep getting suspended for using to much cpu quota.
I run several sites and am wanting to setup several more. Currently I have two shared plans, but I don't like how the add-on domains are affected by the main domain (e.g. addon.main.com on 4## and 5## pages).
Is going reseller the easiest way for me to have these domains not affected by each other (a separate cpanel each)?
Finally, I don't use a lot of resources so are there actually reseller plans out there with lower prices (and lower resources too).
Just wanted to get on board and discuss Yawp Domains. We are a new business that has recently started a new online shop. We were dealing with another company and came across Yawp domains. They have been fantastic with every aspect in getting us started. From the website set up to web hosting and domain names. They are genuine people who care about our business. The support team was great and the response time is exceptional. Definitely recommend them to anyone wanting a personalised service. The after hour customer service is second to none. Well done guys and keep up the good work. More people like you are needed in business.
I have a little question that I'm sure somebody more knowledgeable can answer. I had a hosting account with GoDaddy that just hosted my web site only. I had a few clients need hosting at the same time so I looked into upgrading my account to one that would host multiple domains. (this is my first time with multiple clients, can you tell?) I thought perfect! I can host all of my clients accounts from this one hosting account. I thought there would be multiple account interfaces to support this.
So when I get in there, it lets me add one of the domains I was working on and then I went to upload the files and apparently I had to upload the file to a directory off of my site. So newsite.com points to mysite.com/newsite.
I uploaded it just to test it out and when you go to newsite.com it shows in the address bar as newsite.com, not mysite.com/newsite, even though that is the directory path. I'm sure there's a name for this but I have no idea what it is so I wanted to explain my issue clearly.
So, I'm wondering, is this kosher? Is this bad to do or do a lot of people do this and will it affect my site? From what I've gathered so far, people only do this when they have multiple domains pointing to the same site, or am I wrong?
I'm about to the point where I am ready to host my website. I already have a domain but no hosting plan. In the future I may want to have several different websites each with their own unique domain. I was wondering if I choose a hosting plan for one site, can I use the unused web space for additional domains/websites?
I'm doing some work for a client, they have a linux developer package with Fasthosts for an existing website.
[url]
what I can't seem to work out from the Fasthosts website is whether I could register another domain with this package to save having to buy further hosting. Both websites are pretty small.
I just tried westhost. Very nice folks, good reviews, worth a shot. I signed up for a regular hosting account that allows multiple domains. That didn't work for email. An email user has access to email under that users name for all domains attached to the account. so you can't have info@abc.com, info@def.com, etc. One info@ per account. I did find a hack for it, but it wouldn't work with web mail.
So now I need to find a host that separates mail by domain WITH webmail.
This is getting so tiresome. I have a VPS with "the planet", but so many things just don't work out of the box. I've been fighting with them about PHP not sending mail for months. DNS problems everytime I setup a new domain. There has to be an easier way!
15 domains, everything needs to work. I don't want to manage anything. No resellers. The company I host with will own the data center.
do Dedicated Server hosting plans always allow for unlimited domains?"
It would be great if it was so, but I have NO idea if it is that way. My common sense says "of course stupid, you have the whole box for yourself", but my guts tell me I should know better before assuming it.
I have 2 wordpress blogs, and I'd like a few different domains to be shared on each of them.
Using some exemples, suppose I have domains from domainA.com to domainE.com. domainA.com is my main domain and the others are addon domains.
Today Blog1 is using blog.domainA.com, and domainB.com and domainC.com use WebRedirect to blog.domainA.com. And Blog2 uses domainD.com with WebRedirect on domainE.com too.
To access a post like /2008/02/02/this-is-a-nice-post, it is available only at blog.domainA.com, and not by domains B and C. I'd like they 3 to be able to access all posts directly, without redirecting to domain A.
To do that, I suppose I'd need to do some config on cPanel. And also on wordpress, even if I replicate it over other domains it insists to redirect to its configured domain.
I was thinking on the possibility of using symbolic link (ln -s) on their folders to blog.domainA.com folder, but I don't have access to shell on SSH so I'd like to know if it would work before trying.
In a real exemple of what I want, these domains all share the same phpBB forum: forumpcs.com.br, extremepc.com.br, forumdohardware.com.br.
Do u know if symbolic link would work to share the same wordpress? And how to make wordpress stop redirecting to blog.domainA.com?
I have one registered domain on VPS with DNS hosting and would like to host more domains (sites) on that VPS.
As I understood, I don't have to buy DNS hosting for the other domain, so how do I host more domains? It's Windows VPS with Plesk. Can anyone explain in detail?
Do I need to create NS records for my registered domain (ns1.mydomain.com and ns2.mydomain.com) and then point other domain to those nameservers?
I basically have three registered domains for my three small textiles businesses and use them only for google apps for email.
I am planning to use the domains for creating small websites for both the firms so that my business looks professional to my existing customers. I just want to add a few pictures of my factory and products and a small business profile for each of them.
What I want is a hosting service, which gives me about 100 mb space, very limited bandwidh (because I wont have more than a few dozen visitors every month) and facility for 3 domains. Also it should be easy to use, because I have absolutely no html or any such knowledge and would prefer if I could use a WYSIWYG interface initially.
Also since I wont be using the website to sell products or any other important core-business activity, I dont want to spend too much, maybe just about $2 per month or lesser. I dont care about 99.9% uptime etc. coz I wont be getting too many visitors. I am located in India and most people browsing my site would be from within India.
We're currently working with a customer to add a .nl domain to our server. However, there seems to be strict guidelines set for the registration of .nl domains. We've tried various zone modifications, but to no avail.
Ran a check on DNSReport just to verify that our settings are fine, and we're only having this problem with .nl domains: [url]
Wondering if anyone had any experience with dealing with this issue. We basically need this to check out (SIDN is the registrar for .nl domains):
[url]
But when we put the customers domain, and our nameservers, here is the message:
** Summary: REJECTED jumpstyleholland.nl.
Some problems need to be fixed:
- Some of your name servers cannot be used (are broken).
** Full check report:
* primary name server "ns1.jetnethost.com." [BROKEN]
Broken: the name server does not know of domain "jumpstyleholland.nl."
I've recently set up a dedicated server (CentOS) and was wondering whether it was possible to have multiple domains pointed to the same ip, but not just transfering to it, but the domain name should remain in the address bar, no matter what domain you use.
Example: when I visit domain.net, I'd like to browse my site, look at a thread and the address is something like: domain.net/forum/showthread.php?f=5, but when I visit seconddomain.org, I should be able to look up the very same thread and get seconddomain.org/forum/showthread.php?f=5 in the address bar.
And if this would be possible, how could I let search engines understand it's the same site & only get indexed once and not get penalised for both site not having original content?
Would I need to setup a nameserver of my own?
I can forward both the domain to either a name server or an ip.
I signed up for a hosting account somewhere and they include unlimited add-on domains. Does this mean I can add any domain, direct my nameservers there and have as many hosting accounts that I want?