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How To Add Another Domain To A Hostgator Hosting Account

Get The Right Hosting Plan

Let’s assume you already have a hosting account with Hostgator for your first website, and now want to add a second website to it. So how do you do that? First, you need the right hosting plan. If you have the Hatchling plan, you need to upgrade to Hostgator’s Baby Plan. that enables you to host two or more websites.

Add your second domain as a ‘Add-on domain’

When you are logged into the cpanel of your first website, you will see the ‘domain’ section at the bottom:

What is the difference between subdomains, addon domains and parked domains?

A subdomain is a second website, but there is no new domain name. Instead, you use an existing domain name. A subdomain name looks like ’2ndwebsite.mywebsite.com’.

An addon domain is a second website with its own domain name, like ‘http://www.my2ndwebsite.com’. You need you to register the new domain name before you can add it to your hosting account. With addon Domains you can host multiple different domains with different website content, all under the same disk space and bandwidth of one cPanel.

Parked domains are commonly used when you need a place to park a domain you do not have created content for. You see a lot of parked domains with just one page having a bunch of advertising links. Every time somebody clicks on such a link, the website owner gets paid by the advertiser.

So what you want to do to add another website to your Hostgator hosting account is creating an ‘addon domain’.

How do I create the Addon Domain?

Note: You may not be able to create an addon Domain if you do not own the domain name, or if you try to create it right after you bought the domain name and your DNS hasn’t propagated yet.

So to create a second domain name with its own website, do the following:

Login to your cPanel and click in the ‘domain’ section on addon domains. There are three fields cPanel asks for when creating an addon domain.

New Domain Name: Enter the new name as mysecondwebsite.com, without http or www in the name.
Username/directory/subdomain Name: This will be the folder cPanel creates in your public_html folder. Normally, you want to ensure the name you provide doesn’t already exist as a folder in public_html, but cPanel will automatically suggest the name and we recommend you stick with the suggestion.
Password: Enter any password you want here. This password is used for an FTP account which is automatically created by cPanel.

Your second domain is now successfully added. When you access your web server with a FTP program, you will see a that new folder ‘mysecondwebsite.com’ was created for you.You can upload the website files to that folder, or use the cpanel Fantastico to set up WordPress for your second website.

Tip: If you have uploaded files to your new website and still see the default ‘Apache is working on your cpanel’ message, you need to clean the cookies and Temporary Internet Files in your internet browser (in Internet Explorer Tools/Internet Options/Browsing History), or restart your computer to make your internet browser load a fresh view for your website.