Create Multiple Websites Under 1 Shared-Hosting Account

By . in Hosting. Updated on .

Most shared-hosting package sticks with one domain per account; Some comes with 2-5 extra add-on domains; depends on the cost and specifications of your package.

What if you want to add more domains? The direct solution to this is – pay your hosting company more. Here’s a method to add more domains to your web hosting account without paying a penny. This technique allows you to achieve

  • Multiple domains, one website, one Share Hosting account – Example: Hongkiat.net, Hongkiat.org point back (redirect) to hongkiat.com
  • Multiple domains, few websites, one Share Hosting account (each with its own domain name) under a single shared-hosting account. – Example: Create websites like car-talk.com, phone-talk.com, etc under one shared-hosting account.

First and Foremost, Sign up with ZoneEdit (Free)

I’ll be using ZoneEdit, so first thing you need to do is to sign up an account with ZoneEdit if you ain’t have one.

What is ZoneEdit

In short, ZoneEdit hosts your DNS, domains, emails (forwarding) for free. All you need to do is to point your domain’s DNS to ZoneEdit’s. Read more about ZoneEdit.

Multiple Domains, 1 Website, 1 Shared Hosting

This means hosting multiple domains, all pointing to one website on a shared hosting account. Let’s take my implementation for this example. I’ve recently bought few domains (hongkiat.net & hongkiat.org respectively), and ZoneEdit is going to help me point these domains back to hongkiat.com or hongkiat.com/blog

  1. Login to ZoneEdit, click on Add Zones
  2. Type in the new domain, and click Add Zone
  3. You will be given 2 Nameservers Hosts and IPs. In my case, I’m given ns18.zoneedit.com (72.9.106.68) ns9.zoneedit.com (66.240.231.42 )
  4. Open another browser, login to your Domain Control Panel. Look for Nameservers and replace existing ones with both ZoneEdit’s nameservers.
  5. Back to ZoneEdit, click Edit Zone, and click the new added domain name.

  6. Click Web Forward, type in your Destination URL. By default, domain with and without “www” will point to Destination URL unless you custom configure.
  7. Done! It’ll take few minutes (some may take up to 1 day, depends on the Nameservers Update) before you can actually try it out. Upon success setting, typing “hongkiat.net” in browser will direct you to “hongkiat.com“

Multiple Domains, Multiple Website, 1 Shared Hosting

If you have a Shared Hosting account with plenty of GBs of space to kill, you can start few websites with different domains; hosting all of them under one Shared Hosting account although your web hosting company says only 1 add-on domain is allowed.

Create your website in another folder Create new folder to store your new website, get the Direct URL to that website. Direct URL here = Destination URL in ZoneEdit

Example: If I create “phonesandgadgets” directly under “/public_html/hongkiat/” My Direct URL will be https://www.hongkiat.com/phonesandgadgets/ Use ZoneEdit Follow steps listed in Multiple Domains, 1 Website, 1 Shared Hosting, BUT change the Destination URL. Done! Whenever you type in your new domain in the browser, it will call the content from where you’ve assigned. You can repeat this method to add more domain but still you will be restricted by:

  • Hosting Capacity – Determine your space allocations for each of these websites wisely
  • ZoneEdit free account – Each free account only allow 5 domains to be added.
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