Note: This posted was last edited on July 23, 2009...
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
- $50.00 Microsoft adCenter Credit
- ...and more recently, $50.00 Facebook Credit
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 500 email addresses belong to the main domain. However, when you buy other domain names you are given an email account with them. 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 a forwarding email address and when any email is sent to it, the email gets forwarded to the main email address that came with domain (or any email address for that matter). 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, or even do as I've been doing lately, use a GMail email address for each domain.
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. One note of caution though, if you plan to sell the blogs at a later date, it may be best to keep the data in separate databases. You could run some SQL commands to pull the data from the proper tables out so it's really not a huge deal.
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 "_sites" folder as described above. Then...
- Login to your GoDaddy account.
- Choose the 'Hosting' option under 'My Products' on the left side.
- Choose the 'Manage Account' option under 'Control Panel'.
- Choose Settings, Domain Management.
- Click the 'Add Domain' button.
- Begin typing the domain name in the 'Domain' box, it should show up in a filtered list, click on the domain from the list.
- Click the 'Browse...' button and locate the folder where you want the domain to point to (likely "/_sites/domain.com")
- Click 'OK'.
Now, if you have an "index" file in that folder, or the Wordpress installation files perhaps, you should be able to browse that domain and pull up the index file to your site or blog, etc. It may take a few minutes for GoDaddy to point the domain to that folder after following the steps above though. Just hit 'Refresh List' on the 'Domain Management' screen until you see 'Setup' under the 'Status' column.
Good luck... any questions, just ask.
Tags: blogger, how-can-i-make-money, money-making-opportunities, making-money-from-home, earning-money
Related posts:
- Host Unlimited Web Sites With GoDaddy Deluxe Plan, Plus Get $125 In Ad Credits
- Blog Series – From Setup To ? – Part 2a – Quick-Installing WordPress with GoDaddy
- How Do I Setup A Database On GoDaddy And Find The Host Name?
- Buy Domain Names From GoDaddy
- Curious How To Look At Your MySQL DB Structure At GoDaddy?
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August 31st, 2009 at 9:44 am
A year later and this post is still helping people. Thank you! I have been thinking about how I could do this but thought I had to do to a dedicated server. Thanks again for this post.
October 7th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Thank you! You answered my question better than the GoDaddy site did and with clearer instructions!
October 11th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
hi, great post! i have a question however, i have purchsed a domain a year back( which is my primary domain ) , i have shifted my website to wordpess which is installed in a folder in my root directory. i want to point my primany domain to this folder. When i try doint it using domain management, my primary domain doesnt come in the list ( it shows other domains purchased by me ) ..what should i do?
October 11th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
@nitesh, thanks for the comment…
In that case I would think you would have to make a new domain the primary, then the old primary will show up in the list.
When I did a similar thing in the past, I just contacted GoDaddy and they witched my primary domain for me.. but perhaps it’s an option in tha control panel now, i’m not sure
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:05 am
Sorry, let me try and word it differently. Is there any way to keep the “add on” domains from being viewable as subfolders on the Primary domain? I’m worried that search engines will see those addon domains as subfolders on the Primary domain and penalize the whole group of sites. Any ideas?
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:30 am
Hi Dave.. I found your other comment in the spam.. sry bout that..
I worried about the same thing when I first set things up. I read somewhere that it wouldn’t be an issue so I just trusted that it wouldn’t. Since then I have checked which pages were indexed by Google for my main domain and none of my addon sites show up, so I’m satisfied. (plus there is no evidence on my addon domains what the main domain is)
I still can browse to the addon domains (or subfolders) from the main one but as long as there aren’t any backlinks to them they won’t get indexed and will stay hidden (I guess)…
Might be a question for GoDaddy tech support if you are very concerned about it.. but truthfully.. they may not know the answer and just make one up.. perhaps opening a thread in the GoDaddy forum might get some answers from other users. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.
November 3rd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
That’s great news Keith, thanks for the update. I’m putting the plan in action, I’ll let you know if I ever run into any problems. Thanks for the great site.
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:04 pm
What would I do if I wanted to host a friends domain on my hosting play. Could I just point his domain at my name servers then configure to a folder as usual (like godaddy does for domains with other registars) or does the domain (and billing) have to be under my account
Thanks for the great info
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Hi Dan, yep just change the name servers… my gf points her domains to my hosting acct and it works fine
November 30th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Hi. Based on the information provided here, I managed to host multiple websites using GoDaddy’s Unlimited plan. Thanks!
However, I saw a minor drawback here. I hosted http://www.A.com (primary website) and http://www.B.com under 1 account (GoDaddy’s unlimited plan); and have SimpleMachineForum installed on a subdomain (www.forum.B.com). The address changed to “www.A.com/B.com/forum/index.php” on postback of my activities in the forum. My question is – whether I can have the http://www.forum.b.com address intact/shown on any postback activities??
Thanks.
Regards,
JeeShen Lee
November 30th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Hi JeeShen Lee,
I haven’t really setup sub domains or forums a whole lot on GoDaddy but I suspect it has to do with your forum software using the php variable DOCUMENT_ROOT within some of it’s files.. If that’s the case, switching them to SUBDOMAIN_DOCUMENT_ROOT should do the trick. If you find that that is the case, you can use a text editor like TextPad to open all files within the directory and do a mass replace.
Hope this steers you in the right direction!
November 30th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Hello Keith,
Thanks! I managed to do it by changing the “Settings.php” alone. Here’s what I did in the “Settings.php”:
Change: $boardurl = ‘http://A.com/B.com/forum’;
To: $boardurl = ‘http://forum.B.com’;
Thanks.
Regards,
Jeeshen Lee.
November 30th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
@Jeeshen Lee
Awesome, glad it worked
January 18th, 2010 at 1:32 am
First of all, thanks a lot for a great help topic. I just bought multiple site hosting plan in Godaddy. so I have one domain http://www.aaa.com and it points to “/” and it is my primary. I made a folder “_sites” and made a folder called http://www.bbb.com and pointed my domain to /_sites/www.bbb.com.
Here is my concern, I can not change the pointing folder of my primary domain so there should be at least one domain in my / folder, right? And I can host other domains under “/_sites”. so whatever I have in a root (/) folder that will be for my primary domain (www.aaa.com) right?
Thank you so much.
Rabin
January 18th, 2010 at 1:39 am
@Rabin
- I’m not sure what you mean by: “I can not change the pointing folder of my primary domain so there should be at least one domain in my / folder, right?”
But the answer to: “And I can host other domains under “/_sites”. so whatever I have in a root (/) folder that will be for my primary domain (www.aaa.com) right?” is….
Yes :)
January 18th, 2010 at 1:46 am
I am sorry that you did not understand.
What I mean is, When I register in godaddy I resigered for http://www.aaa.com and now the whole hosting folder belongs to http://www.aaa.com and this is my primary domain too. when I go to domain management then I can’ change the pointing folder of other domain but I can’t not change the point folde of primary because there is no edit option for primary.
Here’s the other problem I have.
http://www.aaa.com is a primary domain and it is on (/) folder.
I used IE and browse http://www.aaa.com then I tried..www.aaa.com/_sites/www.bbb.com then I could see the index page of the http://www.bbb.com.
http://www.bbb.com is a different domain and it points to /_sites/www.bbb.com..is there any way I can block the content of one domain so that would not happen.
Thanks
Rabin
January 18th, 2010 at 1:59 am
@Rabin: “I can’t not change the point folde of primary because there is no edit option for primary.” < - Sure ya can.. go to Settings -> Change Domain Name
As for your other issue, I worried about the same thing but didn’t find a solution so I gave up and never had a problem with it…
January 24th, 2010 at 2:15 am
I found your post too late. I had 7 sites that I wanted to add wordpress to and struggled through the process only to find they didn’t allow adding wordpress to a “free” account. But I had a paid account all along, my domains just weren’t under that account (I had never added them, and nobody ever told me I needed to) Now I’m trying to figure out how to change them from the “free account” status and then use your procedure to
then put them under my regular linux deluxe account. Godaddy is the most complicated site I’ve ever tried to comprehend. I spend hours just to get minor things done. They have the worst instructions ever.
My rant for the day.
Rick Sittel
February 9th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Thank you so much for posting this article. I’ve been pulling out my hair trying to figure out the best way to do this. When you’re working online, you can feel incredible isolated, and I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one out here that thinks like this!
I decided to use Wordpress MU to achieve exactly this, but my major issue is slowness. I went with the host that was suggested by http://wp.mu/ and paid for them to do the installation and am severely under with their service and the speed of the application.
I’m in the process of making the WPMU move to GoDaddy, but have heard similar complaints on forums from their customers. GoDaddy’s suggested a virtual dedicated server, which if it provides the level of service that they claim, would be well worth the expense.
My question to you is, have you tried WPMU and if so, do STILL you suggest setting up sites in the way that you have described above?
Also, have you noticed a difference in the speed of each site when you have multiple sites setup in the manner that you have described?
You’ve already been a wonderful help, but any additional insight that you can provide would be wonderful.
February 10th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Hi Tiffany,
I’ve used MU in the past to help someone else setup their site. I didn’t like how it seemed like it so many versions behind the regular WP. I heard talks that the MU will be integrated with the single version of WP at some point so I may revisit it then.
If I understand your question correctly, yes I would use my shared hosting account to host an MU site, just like I would any other site My decision to host on a shared server or not has more to do with the anticipated amount of traffic. If you expect/are getting high volumes then of course, some sort of dedicated server may be a good idea.
The speed of my sites have not been affected by the number of sites added to my shared account.
Anymore questions, let me know. I hope that if you choose a GoDaddy dedicated hosting plan it serves the purpose for you. If you have any questions about it, I’ll do my best to help.
Click Here For GoDaddy Hosting
February 12th, 2010 at 2:09 am
Keith,
Great tip! I had been going around with godaddy support and all I really needed was this post. Now it is working like a charm.
Thanks for sharing.
March 1st, 2010 at 7:11 am
Hey Keith, quick question for you since your site seems to be the only one that understands what I’m looking to do.
I have a blog installed already and want to help out a friend by installing a second wordpress installation to a sub folder on my hosting account, and then link their domain like you mentioned above.
I have linked the domain to my hosting account and it is working fine, but I want to do something similar to what JeeShen Lee (November 30th, 2009 at 8:41 am ) wanted, but for wordpress. Currently the only thing that seems to be happening is the same thing as domain forwarding w/masking, however that isn’t going to work because I need to be able to have people access the permalinks within wordpress and have it link to their website domain, and not mydomain.com/subdomain/permalink?=33
Any ideas?
March 11th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Hi,
How can I stop the _sites/URL from being indexed by Google? I only want URL to be indexed, especially to avoid duplicate content. Can I add something to the robots.txt of the base url or something along those lines? I have recently noticed that Google has indexed a _sites/URL address as well as the URL itself.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
David
March 11th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
@david lawton – that’s all I did (edit robots)… and of course avoid linking to the path from anywhere (including emails)
March 11th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
@keith
awesome thanks for the info
do you know what i would put in the robots.txt file? i want to be very careful that i don’t block the direct url from being indexed. i’m guessing the robots.txt would need to occur at the base domain level blocking the _sites directory, as opposed to at the site level. i also went into webmaster tools for the base domain and requested removal of the _sites directory hopefully that will work also.
i did everything i could to avoid linking but discovered that when changing a wordpress url the links to attachments such as images is not updated, and therefore google was able to index the site through this alternative path (for anyone else reading this with the same problem i quickly found a plugin which will allow you to update attachment urls to the new url)
anyway,
March 11th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
@david adding it to webmaster tools should be sufficient. However, doing it in webmaster tools, only affects Google.
Adding the code to the robots file of the root site which contains the “_sites” folder will not affect the actual URL from being indexed. Here’s the code:
Disallow: /_sites
… keep in mind it’s case sensitive
hope that helps!
March 14th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
Kieth!
Awesome post, man. This has answered every question I have…except one. And forgive me if it’s a simple thing, but while I am experienced with site management/design…SEO/Indexing is not a strong point.
My question is, lets say I have set all 40 of my sites using WP, and the way you have suggested, and somewhere along the line, one of the sites is pulling a lot of traffic, doing very well, and someone wants to buy it from me.
I understand how I can sell them the contents of the site, that is simple.
But if I did that, since Google is indexing from my first (primary)domain, and not as an actual “individual” site, would the person buying it be at a huge disadvantage when they took over the site, hosting it in a different location? And have problems with permalinks, etc? Or am I completely off-base in how that system works?
This is probably easy, but I definitely don’t want to set anything up wrong and then 6 months down the road realize I really screwed up.
Thanks in advance for any info…from what I’ve read so far your site has AWESOME content. Kudos!
Cheers,
~JC
March 15th, 2010 at 4:17 am
Absolutely glad this post is still showing up on google as I searched how to set a second site up on my Godaddy account. Very helpful!
As I conquered the quest of setting up an account and running my first wordpress site, I realized it was kinda simple considering I know knowing about hosting a site. Although, I couldn’t have done it without blogs and tutorials of great people who take the time to share their knowledge. Thanks for another great read as I felt clueless as to how to setup a second website on my Godaddy account. blessings…
-one hope
March 15th, 2010 at 11:21 am
@JC: I think everything will be fine. I strip off sites from my hosting all of the time to sell and everything stays in tact as far as indexed pages etc. The extra folder, with your sites, in the root is largely hidden from the web (unless it gets linked to and eventually indexed, but that would just mean a bunch of extra files indexed for your root domain).
The important thing to note is that your individual sites get indexed and treated as if they were hosted alone.
The difference between shared hosting with GoDaddy and other hosts for the most part.. is GoDaddy keeps the extra sites off the root while the others keep them on the same level as the root. The advantage with GoDaddy, besides price, is that you can keep them better organized (in my opinion).
Just to let you know as well… In the past, I sold the site that was attached to my hosting account (the root domain). I was able to change out the root domain with another one first, then sell it like any other. So… even the root domain can be pulled with a cpl extra steps.
Hope that helps..
March 15th, 2010 at 11:22 am
@Joseph… glad to hear it! Thanks for the feedback!
March 15th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
@Keith
Perfect! Thanks for the follow-up. I set up the majority of my sites the way you mentioned with no issues at all installing Wordpress, etc.
Now that I know you have done exactly what I was wondering about, I am much more confident about hosting this way.
Appreciate the thoroughness!
Cheers,
~JC