Change Website Root
Each domain associated with your hosting plan stores its files in a particular directory known as its parking location. When you have only one domain hosted on a plan, the parking location is set (by default) to the {home}/html/ directory. However, when you have two or more domains hosted on a plan, files for the primary domain (usually the first domain associated with the Webspace) are stored in the {home}/html/ directory, while files for the secondary domain(s) are stored in a directory that shares the same name as the domain itself (i.e. {home}/yourdomainname.com/html/).
You can use the Change Website Root application within the Control Panel to change the parking location for any of your domains.
- Start by logging into the Control Panel
- Next, under the Account Information section, select a hosted domain you’d like to manage.
- Click the Change Website Root icon.
- On the Modify Domain Location page, select the parking location for the domain you’ve selected. You will have two options: the {home}/html/ directory (designated as /) or the {home}/yourdomainname.com/ directory (designated as /yourdomainname.com).
- Click Modify to change the parking location or click Cancel to escape.
Important: Changing a domain’s parking location does not move any of the files associated with a particular domain – it just changes the directory that a browser looks in when a visitor requests your site’s content. If you change your primary domain’s parking location from / to yourdomainname.com/, you will need to move the files found in the {home}/html/ directory to the {home}/yourdomainname.com/html/ before a browser will be able to pull up your site.
Likewise, when you change a directory from yourdomainname.com/ to /, the site that was once your secondary site will immediately be associated with the files in your {home}/html/ directory (i.e. the files associated with your primary domain). This may have unintended consequences: visitors to the secondary site will see the primary site’s content until the files are moved. Finally, you can park more than one domain in the / directory. Under this scenario, all the domains that share the same root directory will display the same content, albeit with different URLs.