Using A Purchased Domain

[tmercswims]

I am very confused by this, so I am going to ask here before I do anything that involves spending money xP

 

If I buy a domain name, how do I get it to be used for my heliohost account here? Do I use the Change main domain form and put in the one I purchase, as well as pointing my purchased domain to ns1.heliohost.org and ns2.heliohost.org? Or do I just do the repointing?

 

I'm sorry if this was confusing, I had a hard time trying to articulate my question hahaha.

[Byron]

You could change your main domain but I would recommend just adding it as a Parked Domain. Nobody will ever know the difference. And yes you still point it to our nameservers.

 

[tmercswims]

Okay, so just to be sure that I have this right - as a parked domain, everything will be (in my case) tmercswims.com/* instead of tmercswims.heliohost.org/*, and it will all be based from that from now on? As in, the *heliohost.org/* won't be seen again?

 

And another thing, how will this affect any sub-domains that already exist? For example, I have blog.tmercswims.heliohost.org configured already. Will it automatically become blog.tmercswims.com, or will there be something I will need to do?

[Byron]

With a parked domain, you can still access your site via the heliohost subdomain also.

 

There's nothing you need to change on your sub-domains. The parked domain will work for those too.

 

 

EDIT: I take that back. I think you do need to add the parked domain to the subdomain at your cpanel under Subdomains.

[Krydos]

As in, the *heliohost.org/* won't be seen again?

A parked domain is just another name to get people to your public_html directory. If you give someone the address whatever.heliohost.org that is what they will see in the browser url bar. If you give people the whatever.com address that is what they will see in the bar. If all you give out publically is the whatever.com there is no way for a regular site visitor to find the whatever.heliohost.org.

 

An addon domain is basically a shortcut to get to folders within your public_html directory. Say you own whatever.com and shortcut.com, then whatever.com/shortcut.com/index.html would show the same content as shortcut.com/index.html, but like above if all you gave out was the shortcut.com address no one would be able to find the root directory.

 

Byron is sort of right. If you have subdomain.whatever.heliohost.org set up already then it probably resides within the directory subdomain, so when you park whatever.com you can reach the subdomain by going to whatever.com/subdomain, but subdomain.whatever.com won't work unless you go to the sub domain button in cpanel and link that C name to that directory.

 

Hope that makes it a little clearer. Parked/addon domains are really the best way to go, but some people insist on changing their main domain so we have that tool, but honestly it's pointless in most situations.

[tmercswims]

Okay, I think I got it now. Thanks for clearing all that up guys, I appreciate it!