How to host two different domains on the same hosting account?

November 21, 2019 4:10 PM

What is the best way to host two different domains on the same webhosting account? I have two domains (one personal, one professional). The professional one is new and I haven't created a real site for it yet. The personal domain points to a self-hosted WordPress site that I've had for over a decade. I'd like to be able to host both domains on the same webhosting account. Is this possible?

I don't expect either site to be high-traffic. I'm not 100% committed to using WordPress for the professional/second domain, but my web development skills are somewhere between woefully out-of-date and 'google my way through and hope things work'.

From what I can tell, these are my options:

1. Convert my WordPress site to the Multisite version of WordPress and set up a the new domain as another WordPress site. Will this work with two different domain names, or does this only work for subdomains?
2. Create the site for the new domain using the sitebuilder tools that come with my hosting account.
3. Use DreamWeaver or something similar to build static pages and upload to my hosting account.
4. install a second type of CMS using cPanel.
5. Give up and just host the sites on two different hosting options. It doesn't seem like this should be necessary.

So far, Option 1 feels the least intimidating due to the aforementioned lack of current web development skills. I can get around WordPress okay on my own, but this is getting a bit advanced for me. Am I asking for trouble? Any advice, best practices or tips would be appreciated. Thanks!

posted by melissa to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

It really depends on where you host & the hosting plan you have. Many plans will let you host multiple sites. If yours does, you should be able to set up a second site (your second domain) in cpanel & install a second instance of WordPress.

I have run both multisite & individual installations & I would strongly suggest that you *not* use multisite.
posted by belladonna at 4:14 PM on November 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

Belladonna has it in one. It depends on the host but isn’t rocket science. Multi site is better than it used to be, but not worth the trouble for most things.
posted by advicepig at 4:38 PM on November 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

It shouldn't be too difficult to set up different WP instances if you don't want to deal with a multisite install.

You should be able to use the regular Wordpress install process (via your cpanel or whatever) to put WP on your second site, just using a different directory for the WP files on your host. For instance instead of site.com/wordpress or whatever it would be under site.com/workpress.

I believe it should be that simple!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 5:02 PM on November 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

This is how it works at Dreamhost. For back end security purposes they do suggest you set up individual site users for each hosted site - this is one dropdown in the setup process, you don't need to care all that much about what it is - but it's all one control panel, a single account you're paying for, all your sites are there to admin in one list. I have something like 15 sites parked or fully-hosted on my account, some of them use their Wordpress One-Click Install which has always worked well enough for me, I'm not doing fancy customizations or anything.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:04 PM on November 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm seconding the recommendation for Dreamhost. I've used them for over 15 years. I host a number of low-traffic sites, each with its own domain. Some sites are WordPress, some are straight HTML. I have not had any major problems with Dreamhost, and the support people are reasonably responsive, especially given the low cost of the service.
posted by alex1965 at 8:08 PM on November 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Virtual hosting. Depends on your hosting provider on how trivial it can be.

The simplest I think... (also a Dreamhost user HA!) boils down to:

Your home directory has a directory for each site you host: this.com and that.com.

Now this.com and that.com both have the same IP address, but the HTTP web stuff has a Host: header that tells it which site the browser wanted.

If someone types in this.com, they go to 192.168.1.1 with a Host: header of this.com. If they go to that.com, they go to 192.168.1.1 with a Host header of that.com. Depending on the Host: header, the web server will either serve up the this.com or that.com directory. Easy peasy.

It comes down to more of a "does your current hosting provider let you do this" and "how easy is the web-management interface to figure out". But it's totally possible and done all the time and should be trivial and yes you should be able to do this.
posted by zengargoyle at 7:27 PM on November 22, 2019