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.
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!
April 24th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Hey Tim,
Nope, I don’t see any problems with it at all…that’s pretty much what I would do, except I would probably even use the same db but just give the tables a different prefix. Good luck…
Thanks for stopping by.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Hi Keith,
i have a website (jpvazquez.com) with godaddy deluxe hosting. I wanted to host a different site (also using wordpress) in the same account.
Wordpress is installed in the root directory, what should i do?
Thanks
Juan Vazquez-Abarcas last blog post..Adios al Brunello?
May 14th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Hi Juan…Thanks for the question….this post gets into how to install another Wordpress blog under the same GoDaddy account with a different domain name (closer to the end of the post if you haven’t read the whole thing). However if you want to install a blog off the root, you can simply create a folder called “blog” or something similar and install the blog as you normally would but in that newly created directory.
Hope that helps…if you still have questions, let me know.
Keith
May 14th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Keith,
thanks for the quick response, the part i don’t get is the directory path….
my original site is installed in the hosting root (i think).
I don’t get how to set up the second site.
Thanks
May 14th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Is your second site going to be under an entirely new domain name (but within the same GoDaddy account) or is it just going to be a folder off your main site? for example: http://jpvazquez.com/blog/
I assume it will be for an entirely different domain name if you refer to it as a “second site”. That is covered in this post. You would simply…create a hidden directory in the root of http://jpvazquez.com. Maybe call it “_newsites”. The underscore keeps it near the top. Now create a directory in _newsites called…say “domain_name.com”. Now you can follow the steps above to tell GoDaddy that your root folder for domain_name.com is now “_newsites/domain_name.com”. When a surfer is visiting domain_name.com in the future, GoDaddy will quietly and invisibly point them to http://jpvazquez.com/_newsites/domain_name.com
Hope that clears it up.
p.s. I emailed you as well but I wanted to put the answer here too.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Keith,
You are the closest I’ve come to any help on this subject and I’ve been digging through godaddy support for the last 24 hours.
My primary domain at godaddy is crookedbrooms.com. I am just in the process of trying to host my blog (diydiva.net) under the same godaddy account. I have suceeded in moving the the blog from wordpress.com to http://crookedbrooms.com/diydiva. I cannot for the life of me get my domain diydiva.net to direct there.
From your post I have set up diydiva.net in the domain manager. For the domain hosting path I first used “diydiva/crookedbrooms.com.” (no quotes, obviously). this gave me a 403 error. I just changed the the hosting path to just “diydiva” without crookedbrooms.com as the domain hosting path, since that is the name of the directory it is in, however now diydiva.net is being directed to the crookedbrooms.com website, not the blog.
I know this is a hosting path error, I just don’t know how to fix it. I’m almost completely illiterate when it comes to proper syntax. Am I missing a step here?
I can’t tell you how much I’d appreciate any advice you have on where I’m going wrong.
Thanks!
May 15th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Hi kitliz…thanks for dropping by….I think it might be something to do with URL rewriting…if you try installing it two folder levels deep that might work…I sent you the details by email…
May 15th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Juan,
Did you figure it out? I recently set up a 2nd domain and wordpress blog on my GoDaddy hosting account. It sounds like you may have not moved your 2nd domain over to the hosting account. If not, go to your hosting account, select ‘Hosting’ and then select ‘Managing Domains’ to see a list of other domain names that you have registered with GoDaddy but not yet added to the hosting account. Select the second domain name. When you are asked to name the file path directory, I would do what Keith recommends, which is to add ‘_’ before the name of your domain so that the folder for that domain appears in the top of your directory page when accessing your hosting account. Then, follow the rest of Keith’s steps for redirecting web page users to the correct hosting folder and adding Word Press.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Hey Tim…I believe we got it squared away…we got through the specifics by email….
I appreciate you dropping by though and providing some input!
I hope you are subscribed because I have a great contest coming up that you may be interested in. I’ll be discussing a site I put up that is geared towards a specific city so it might be along the lines with the stuff you are doing online with your San Diego site.
Again, thanks for coming by and dropping a helpful comment.
Keith
May 15th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Sounds good. I’m looking forward to it.
Tim from San Diegos last blog post..The Scripps Research Institute is World’s Largest
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Thx for the tutorial , im just wondering if there is any chance that the sub domain name will stay the same like ” example.com” in the address bar instead of “root.com/_nextsite /example.com” ?
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:01 am
@Hugh
Yep, it’s all hidden from the end user…you would never know it when browsing that you are viewing a sub folder of a different site.
May 24th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
HI, I was reading through your Q/A. I hope you can help me.
I have 1 Godaddy account with a couple domains and the Deluxe hosting package. Everything works fine for the hosting of the domains under that same account I just set them up in the hosting domain management and set directories for each one.
Problem My friend has a seperate Domain registered under Godaddy. I offered to Host her site on my Hosting I set it up under domain management and set up the directories, uploaded (PUT) her site with dreamweaver and all. Site doesn’t come up.
I went to the nameserver on her domain and set it up to the same nameserver IDs that was listed on one of my other domains under the hosting account as it was listed under Custom nameserver.
Am I missing a step?
I e-mailed support to godaddy still waiting on a response. Maybe you can help me faster.
Thanks in advance.
May 24th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
@Sean T….
I wish I could help. I don’t think you can take advantage of the unlimited hosting aspect of your account unless the domain is in the same account. I could be wrong though.
If that is the case, your friend can change ownership of the domain to you and you can slide it in your account…I believe it is free but you may have to pay an additional year.
Sorry I couldn’t be more precise.
Best of luck!
June 20th, 2008 at 9:11 am
From the Domain Hosting Path list choose
–
I never get this option in my domain managment, just a drop down domain name list, I never see a second drop down for the path. Why does every tutorial on hosting two domains from the same go daddy host account include this but I cannot find such a tab, any ideas?
June 20th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Hi Brian…
I don’t know why you wouldn’t have it if you have the Deluxe package (or higher). If you trust me to log in to your account contact me with the contact form.
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:51 pm
This worked for me kind of. It does send you to that directory, but it just seems like another way of masking the domain. For example if the site is mysite.com it always displays “mysite.com” in the address bar and never something like “mysite.com/pictures” for example. and when you right click on the page you can see that it is in a frame. I would like it to act as an actual domain, is there any way possible to do this?
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:06 pm
nevermind, I just needed to wait for the masking to go away hehe. It works perfect.
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:17 pm
…glad it’s working Patrick