Moving to new host - one space, multipe domains pointing at it

[dux]

My question is hosting related, but the set up of the hosting could have a major impact on the search engine results, hence the reason I am posting it here.

I am looking for a new webhost based in the US. I have done a bit of research and the same name keeps coming up (can I name the company?) . They offer web space that allows me to point unlimited domain names at it which (so the salesman tells me) will be seen as inidividual websites. The sites I would like to move all rank well for various phrases and I do not want to risk losing the rankings I have worked hard achieve.

From a costing and day to day running point of view this is a great offer, but my concern is how search engines see this kind of set up and the negative impact it could have. If it meant losing my rankings I would rather pay for each domain to be hosted sepratley.

I am also concerned about reporting, the salesan told me the stats package would see each domain as a sub domain and I would be able to get figures though that.

I am currently using three different hosts for various sites and am very unhappy with one of them, hence the search for another.

Does anyone else use a similar method for hosting multiple websites? Any help would be appreciated. I will name the company if I can?

[bobitza]

I have three sites hosted the way you describe it and I'm very happy how my host redirects them.

Choose your main site to register the account. With cPanel you will create add on domains. Although you will have a folder for each addon domain within the /public_html of the main domain, thus seeing them as subdomains ... I can assure you that the SE will "see" the three sites separately. In fact you can add the 2 addon domains in disallow lines in robots.txt for the main domain to make sure 100% they are not crawled through the main domain. They will have though their own robots.txt, so you can create rules for them too. To be 110% sure you can make a 301 redirect for the subdomains and non-www version to the www version so everything is clear for the SE bots.

Again if your host uses cPanel, you will see traffic details for each one separately.

More info on creating addon domains with cPanel here (http://www.hostingprofs.com/hosting_article36.htm).
More info on changing hosts here (http://www.hostingprofs.com/hosting_article316.htm)
More info on doing 301 redirects: search WPW or here (http://www.webdev77.com/2008/02/seo-tips-and-tricks-1/)

[dux]

thanks bobitza,

you have given me confidence to move forward with this!

i have a few concerns about administering multiple domains through control panel though. i would like to get a feel for what the screen actually looks like (i have used control panel before), for example, when i go to set up an email address, would i see every email address for every domain or are they all set up within their own domain section (as it where). can i run multiple wordpress blogs and would the login's (via a browser) be domain1/wp-login.php - domain2/wp-login.php - domain3/wp-login.php as they are now?

can search engines identify multiple sites sharing the same space? how are ip addresses handled?

thanks again for your help.

[bobitza]

i would like to get a feel for what the screen actually looks like (i have used control panel before), for example, when i go to set up an email address, would i see every email address for every domain or are they all set up within their own domain section

you have one cPanel for all the domains, so there is only one section to add/edit/remove email accounts

http://img352.imageshack.us/img352/181/clipboardemailsd8.gif




can i run multiple wordpress blogs and would the login's (via a browser) be domain1/wp-login.php - domain2/wp-login.php - domain3/wp-login.php as they are now?

when you install a WP blog, you are asked to choose the domain on which it should be installed ... so I guess you CAN run multiple WP blogs. Once they are installed, each has its own URL, admin URL, admin password, etc.

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/1305/clipboardwpsb2.gif



can search engines identify multiple sites sharing the same space? how are ip addresses handled?

they will have the same IP ... not sure about what you mean with "sharing the same space" ... like I said, for the SE, the websites will look like they are on their own.

[incrediblehelp]

FYI - Moving hosts will not cause you rankings to drop.

[tiley]

You should be aware that the add-on domains are also subdomains.

So it is possible to view your site with url like so:

addondomainname/maindomainname.com

To the search engines, your site can appear as

maindomainname.com/addondomainfoldername

You can use robots.txt to prevent search engines from indexing as such if you don't like this.

[Conficio]

I think there are several cases to consider.

If you have multiple domains, then you should choose a hosting company that allows you to set those up and not settle for subdomains like sub1.example.com, sub2.example.com, ...

If you feel like maintaining the sites from the bottom up, a VPS might be the best solution. I love my hosting company vpsFarm.com (http://www.vpsfarm.com). Fast server, reliable servers, reasonable prices, minimalistic management interface, Superb service, always a quick answer when I asked a question. But with a VPS you can't expect much hand holding for application problems.

Yes, you should be able to set up multiple packages of the same app, like wordpress. If not, seek a better hosting company.

And, yes you can operate multiple websites (domains) on the same IP address. However, if they link to each other, then this is not the best solution for SEO purposes. Even neighboring IPs (in the same C-Subnet, meaning the first three numbers of the form 10.123.32.X are the same), as usually assigned by the same hosting company are not ideal. Does it hurt a lot? No, if you have many other links from the outside or the pages have low (<4) PageRank anyhow. But remember, only if you link the sites heavily to each other, it does matter at all.

I hope that helped.

K<o>

[bobitza]

...
If you have multiple domains, then you should choose a hosting company that allows you to set those up and not settle for subdomains like sub1.example.com, sub2.example.com ...

You only have one account, right? And because they are folders in your main account, they are automatically subdomains of your main account (either sub1.example.com or example.com/sub1/). But you will be the only one knowing that. SEs and visitors will not know it, because the web host does some DNS redirection or whatever they do when adding addon domains, and to make sure you can do a redirect and a robots.txt on your own.

So i would not worry about hosting multiple domains on the same account except if the "same IP" issue affects the SEO of the websites.

[williemanillie]

You should be aware that the add-on domains are also subdomains.

So it is possible to view your site with url like so:

addondomainname/maindomainname.com

To the search engines, your site can appear as

maindomainname.com/addondomainfoldername

You can use robots.txt to prevent search engines from indexing as such if you don't like this.

This is not the case unless your host provider doesn't allow anything but subdomains within the html path. My domains are in three different directory trees and logically three different domains.

[dux]

Thanks for your help with my questions, it is very much appreciated.

I have considered everything and taken another look at the hosting company and I am now thinking of opting for the reseller package. This would allow me to control each of my domains seperatley and possibly even start selling hosting to others in the future. The cost of the reseller package would still be less per year than my current running costs for hosting my sites with different companies.

I would also like to offer a couple of friends hosting for their websites, if we all have to log in through the same cp I envisage problems occurriing!

Does anyone have any thoughts/experience of reseller packages they would like to share?

[Stu Wright]

I am very new to sorting out my own domains and at present am changing over to a new server. We have 3 individual sites all on the same server and several other domain names we own but have not used yet. If they are added as sub domains, does this mean I would have to direct them at a certain part of the site and block the spiders from going to that part on their search? For example we sell equipment and I have domains that match different products. If a certain product is not only searchable from a drop down menu, but has a front page link, what is the best way to link it. I may be off the track a bit but I am concerned that if an internal link off the front page is blocked, it may not be a good thing?

Thanks

[speed]

Firstly with cPanel 11 you don't have to have the addon domains as folders within public_html.

In your cPanel account:

Click "Addon Domains"
Enter the new domain e.g. example.com
You will find that cPanel fills in the Document Root to be public_html/example.com so to keep the files outside of the normal public_html just change that to say example.com


At this point the addon domain can't be accessed as a folder of the primary domain e.g. primary.com/addon.com, however cPanel does create a subdomain of the primary domain therefore the addon can be accessed as addon.primary.com, this can be solved by adding rules to .htaccess for the addon domain. The rules just redirect from the addon subdomain back to the true addon.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^addon\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*\.)?primary\.com [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.addon.com/ [R=301,L]


That example .htaccess redirects the non-www version of the addon domain and requests going to the subdomain of the primary to the www version of the addon domain.

So now no duplicates of the site on different domains, this works fine if you are the only user for the hosted sites. If you wish to allow different possibly untrusted users access to sites then a reseller account is the correct solution.

I hope that all make sense.

[datetopia]

You can always opt for a reseller account and use WHM to create cpanel accounts for each of your websites. You can also get multiple IPs so search engines don't identify the website as beeing related.

[dux]

Thanks again guys - I have gone for the reseller option and I am currently busy getting my head around all that it entails. The control panel and each domain set up seem fairly straight forward, but the next big problem is going to be moving the Wordpress blogs. The help pages at Wordpress seem quite good and I am half way through the first move; making a back up of the blog and the sql db.

One thing I have found out since placing the order is that each additional IP address will cost me $2.00 a month. I always thought each of my sites had its own IP address anyway, but maybe that is not the case if they have been on shared hosting plans, would I be right in thinking that?

So far I am very impressed with procedings and feel as though I am in so much more control than before. I had never even thought about this kind of set up until I recently read this post http://www.webproworld.com/hosting-issues/66665-domnain-registration-seperate-hosting.html

[speed]

One thing I have found out since placing the order is that each additional IP address will cost me $2.00 a month. I always thought each of my sites had its own IP address anyway, but maybe that is not the case if they have been on shared hosting plans, would I be right in thinking that?
There's no reason why a site would have its own IP address unless it is making use of an SSL certificate or some application that requires it's own IP. For general wordpress sites you can site them all on 1 IP.

[dux]

Thanks Speed, how about for SEO? My sites link to each other in some way, but certainly not overtly. I am bringing them altogether under the same IP and am a little concerned about penalisation, hence the thinking behiind the IP route. What do you think? I will be migrating slowly btw, not all at once.

[speed]

If you have thousands of sites and are spamming search engines then be afraid otherwise shouldn't be a problem. Some SEO myths (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3583760678227172395) is a slightly old video from Matt Cutts on the subject.

Remember IP addresses are in limited supply and Google are aware of this and that many sites will occupy 1 IP in order to conserve the resource.

[dux]

In that case I have lost my fear! I only interlink when applicable and certainly don't spam - the long term consequences are too scary.

[bobitza]

dux, congrats on a successful move!

let us know how did it go with the blog transfer, maybe write a short DIY based on that.

[dux]

bobitza - thanks, and thanks for your help at the start.

the blog move was a breeze. the most important thing to do was set up the new hosting in EXACTLY the same way on the new server as it was set up on the old server. this meant keeping the same username allocated to me by the old host and setting up the database and database user and passwords on the new server in the same way as the old server. everything was replicated.

potentially, the most complicated part for me was downloading the sql database, but this too turned out to be simple, i just followed the instructions on this page - Backing Up Your Database « wordpress Codex (http://codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database)

after i backed up the database and set up the database and user on the new server, i downloaded the entire blog - files, images and the htaccess file - everything, i then uploaded it all to the new server.

i then logged back into the cpanel on the new server and via phpmyadmin (in my sql) i imported the zipped version of the mysql database and hey presto, the blog worked. all my themes, plug ins etc were all there. i was amazed at how seemless it was. no doubt it would have been more complicated if i had not set up the username etc on the new server in the same way as the old server.

i hope these instructions are clear enough for you? i will probably write something more indepth for my blog when i get time.

[speed]

If both the old and new host use cPanel then the new host can usually copy your account from the old server for you, there's an option to do it in WHM that resellers don't have, or you can do a backup which can be restored by the host.

A server to server copy or restoring a backup can be quicker/simpler than you having to manually creating an exact copy of the old account, downloading files and MySQL before uploading it all again.