April 15th, 2008
Hosting Multiple Sites Or Blogs With One GoDaddy Account
written by Keith James Lock
OK, if you aren't new to this blog, you may have heard me mention once or twice 
that you can host unlimited web sites with just one hosting account at GoDaddy. However, I haven't explained how, which is what will be covered in this post. I decided to write this post after sifting through the keywords in Google Analytics and came across "godaddy install multiple wordpress". Whoever came here using that keyword probably left without the knowledge they were looking for. Hopefully that's not the case next time.
What Do You Actually Get From The GoDaddy Hosting Package?
I covered the features of the GoDaddy hosting package in a previous post but I will go over it again quickly here.
The package that I often recommend to anyone that is serious about making a start online is the 12 month Linux Deluxe Plan. With this plan you are automatically given a 5% discount for paying the year in advance. The cost would be $79.68 which breaks down to $6.64 per month. This purchase entitles you to a domain name for $1.99 which allows you to own the domain for 1 year. Any additional domains you buy GoDaddy usually charges around $10.00 depending on the type (.com, .org, etc.). The main features of the deluxe plan include:
- 150 GB Storage
- 1,500 GB Transfer
- 500 Email Accounts
- Unlimited Web Sites
- 25 MySQL Databases
- Unlimited Email Forwards
- $25.00 Google AdWords Credit (with some restrictions)
- $50.00 Microsoft adCenter Credit (with some restrictions, for example I believe it's for US residents only)
There are more features but those are the most important. It's definitely enough reason to choose GoDaddy to buy hosting from.
Can You Really Host Unlimited Web Sites With GoDaddy?
Although it is a true statement that you can host unlimited sites, there are obviously some limitations. The storage quota, bandwidth quota and databases are shared by all of the sites. It would take a lot of sites to reach the storage limit and if you are at the point where the bandwidth isn't enough then you are probably getting enough traffic to your site(s) to justify stepping up to some dedicated hosting.
It is also worth mentioning a limitation with the email addresses. Your hosting account has a main domain name attached to it. The rest of the domains are sort of sub accounts. The sub accounts aren't as worthy as the main domain (or account). The email addresses belong to the main domain. However, when you buy domains you are given an email account. Depending on what you are doing, one email address per domain is often enough. There are a couple choices for expansion. You are given some email forwards too. You can create fake email accounts and when any email is sent to them, the email gets forwarded to the main account. Or you can simply pay for some extra email addresses. But the point here is to keep costs down and not to pay for anything unnecessarily so try to work with what is already included.
Sharing A Database With Other Wordpress Installations
If you plan to take advantage of your unlimited hosting accounts and go beyond 25 you will be fresh out of databases. What to do? Well, what I do is... I create a database with a generic name and use it for several niches. During the Wordpress setup it asks for the table prefix. Give it a unique table prefix and point the installation to the generic database. Wordpress will handle the rest. All of the data for the new install will share the database but have it's own unique tables so it won't interfere with the other data. No worries because MySQL can handle it, it was designed to handle several requests at once. Also, that is the way Wordpress's Multi User version works, it shares one fat database for all of the blogs.
How Can You Stay Organized Having So Many Web Sites In One Account?
It might seem like it would be difficult to keep everything organized because you are dealing with so many files from multiple sites. What I do is create a folder in the root folder called "_sites". I put the underscore in there so the folder stays near the top of the list when sorted alphabetically. And then within that folder I create a folder for each site. I make the folder name the same name as the domain. Now when I want to add files to any installation I just FTP to the main domain, open the _sites folder and find the site I want to work with and go from there. It's much easier because you don't have to handle multiple FTP accounts because normally you would need one per site. Creating the folder isn't enough to actually have the site pointed to that location when browsing. You have to tell GoDaddy what domain you want pointed where. Follow the steps below to do that.
How Do You Point Domains To The Right Place When Dealing With Unlimited Web Sites At GoDaddy?
First of all you should have purchased hosting at GoDaddy and attached your main domain to your hosting account. Then you should create the folder as described above. Then...
- Login to your account.
- Choose the Manage Account option to go to the Control Panel of your hosting account.
- Choose Settings, Domain Management.
- Choose the domain name from the first list.
- From the Domain Hosting Path list choose <enter directory path>.
- Then type the path to where you site is, or will be, installed. For example if the site is example.com and you followed the folder creation steps above, you would type "_sites/example.com" (without the quotes)
- Click Add Domain.
After a short while you should be able to browse to the site that you just setup.
Good luck... any questions, just ask.
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April 24th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Hi Keith,
You must have been reading my mind when writing this post. I have not maxed out my db allotment in GoDaddy yet, but your post helped me better understand how to work with databases in GoDaddy.
Do you have any advice on the following?
I currently use Wordpress with GoDaddy. The folder is at mydomain.com/blog. Now I want to use Wordpress to create a web site (more of a CMS) at mydomain.com.
I figure I will just install a new WordPress in the root folder (mydomain.com) rather than in an extended folder (mydomain.com/wordpress) and use a new database file. Do you foresee any problems with this approach?
Although the blog and web site will have similar content, the posts in each will be written towards different audiences.
Thanks!