New user of cPanel - I have some simple questions!

[Rerevisionist]

Hi cPanel users!

I have some experience with websites, having designed my own; I know about index.htm, graphics, etc. These questions are specifically about domain names and about cpanel files and their storage.

Leftover from my past - I have several disused domain names. Can I partition up public_html so the domain names beave as different non interconnected websites? so that e.g. olddomain.com looks at one site, mytravels.com looks at another?

-- Presumably there's no difficulty putting if they're already in separate 'folders', so that public_html might just have a few folders - named say travel, old, etc accessed by mydomain.com/travel or mydomain.old etc. No big deal, but it might be nice to have them separated.

I can't find the actual URL of the public_html files themselves. I'm sure I've seen an example - *something like*
http://123.45.67.8/~name/public_html
But I just can't find it.

If I want to point my domain names somewhere, including not live, what's the general outline of how it's done? It sounds simple, by my domain name hosts all have impenetrable instructions - I wish they'd test them on the public.

I have another question, relevant to my host, but it could apply anywhere. I have some videos, and some audio interviews, which I'd like online, on my own site, not youtube, because they'd be likely to be chopped into bits. What are the download limits these days on typical hosts? Obviously audio, and even more so video, files are in MegaBytes which they might frown on.

Apologies for the banality of these questions....

 

[Infopro]

Can I partition up public_html so the domain names beave as different non interconnected websites? so that e.g. olddomain.com looks at one site, mytravels.com looks at another?

Sure, these are called addon domains. At your domain name registrar change the nameservers to point to the server. These nameservers would/should have been provided by your Hosting Provider.

I can't find the actual URL of the public_html files themselves.

The URL in your example is a temp URL, basically.

This is public_html:
/http://123.45.67.8/~name/

So is this:

/home/username/public_html

If you point your domain to the server, this is public_html as well:

/http://yourdomain.com

If I want to point my domain names somewhere, including not live, what's the general outline of how it's done?

If I understand you correctly, Redirects section of your cPanel is probably what you seek. But I'm guessing that what you mean there is something to do with nameservers hard to tell.

I have another question, relevant to my host, but it could apply anywhere. I have some videos, and some audio interviews, which I'd like online, on my own site, not youtube, because they'd be likely to be chopped into bits.

Not sure what you mean by chopped to bits, but there are many sites like youtube you could use easy enough.

What are the download limits these days on typical hosts?

There are none. Well, it depends on the allowed bandwidth of the account/plan you got from your Hosting Provider.

Apologies for the banality of these questions....

No need to apologize, we all have to start somewhere. Your Hosting Provider in this case, would be the best place to start though, really. They should be able to assist you with most all of these questions easy enough.

 

[Rerevisionist]

OK. The hosting is in the USA. I have a few domain names left from abortive attempts in the past to use them. But only one host. I'm asking if the storage space the hosts supply, whch is handled by me on cPanel, can have several different sites on it. Since there's only one index.htm, presuambly it might be possible with several folders, each with its own website - but only if each domain pointed to a different index. That's what I'm wondering.

 

[JaredR.]

You can do this if your host allows you to create addon domains. An addon domain is a special subdomain with its own document root that can also be accessed using its own domain name, i.e. the same content can be accessed either using a unique domain name or using a subdomain of the main domain on the account. The following documentation should help you:

Addon Domains

Your host does have the ability to limit the number of addon domains you can add, or prevent you from adding them at all, so you should ask your host if this is allowed and for any assistance you might need in setting up an addon domain.

 

[culturalproduct]

Hi Rerevisionist
The term "addon" domain sounds misleading if you're not used to cPanel. At first I was stumped because I wanted to set up another domain, which was not an addon to anything. So I ignored the so-called 'addon' function.

For some reason it seems cPanel must have a "primary" domain which MUST reside in /public_html/. Why I don't know, I'm told it can't be moved into a subdirectory.

Then any other domains you set up exist in subdirectories of the primary, "/public_html/newdomain/".

This is done in cpanel under the "Addon domains" function (cPanel > Domains > Addon domains).

Worth knowing: cPanel creates a subdomain using your new domain name, again why I don't know. So if you create a subdirectory called "public_html/newdomain" for "www.newdomain.com" using cPanel's 'addon' domain function, cPanle also creates "newdomain.primarydomain.com" which shows up in your list of subdomains.
I'm told to ignore it, it can't be deleted.

I've been unable to determine what the implications are for search engines, of having domains in subdirectories of a so-called 'primary' domain. I don't know if the collaterally created "newdomain.primarydomain.com" subdomains get indexed either.

I have read that using real directory paths in links and forwarders gives search engines a way into the directory structure and they can then index everything as if it were one big website, instead of, several different domains and subdomains.
So links should point to "www.newdomain.com" or "sub.newdomain.com" or www.primarydomain.com" etc. But never to "111.111.11.11/user/public-html/newdomain/index.htm," for example since the search spider will discover everything the in the path and treat it as one site.

Not sure if that's entirely on point for your situation, but voila. Please ignore if not.

-W