iPage – How To Create A Sub-Domain
First, let me explain the difference between a sub-domain and a sub-directory so we’re on the same page.
Sub-directory - On your hosted domain, a sub-directory is a folder in a folder. In a family environment, it would be a parent/child relationship – a child living in the parent’s home. It’s sort of like a chapter in a book where the book is your main domain name and the sub-directory is a chapter in that book. You create a new folder just like you would on your computer. In your vDeck control panel, you can use the FileManager to create one. Here’s an example of a couple of sub-directories than might contain information about the Weebly and CM4all website builders that come with your iPage web hosting account.
- ezexample.com/weebly
- ezexample.com/cm4all
Sub-domain - A sub-domain resides outside of your main domain and is treated like an entirely different domain. In a family environment, it would be an aunt or uncle relationship. Same maternal or paternal family, but existing as its own family and living in their own house. Any website you publish to a sub-domain is a brand new stand alone website.
If I were to install and demonstrate both the Weebly and CM4all website builders, they can’t both be in the same place. I’d have to install them each on their own domain name or I could create a sub-domain on my main domain and install them in their own sub-domain. Here’s an example of what those sub-domains would look like.
- weebly.ezexample.com (website is active)
- cm4all.ezexample.com (not yet built)
Creating a Sub-Domain on IPage
Login to your vDeck control panel, scroll down to the Domains section and click on DomainCentral.
Click on the main domain name that you’ll be creating the sub-domain on.
A row of tabs appears below the name. Click on the Subdomains tab and enter a name for the sub-domain and the sub-directory that it points to. Make them the same name. Click the Add button.
Now this might be a little confusing because it created a sub-directory and I just got done telling you the difference between the two. When you create a sub-domain, yes, it’s treated as a different domain, BUT the website files have to go someplace, right? So it creates a folder (sub-directory) for them. BUT, and this is the part that always confused me about sub-domains. You do NOT publish your files to ezexample.com/weebly, you publish them to weebly.ezexample.com and your hosting account, through the magic of redirects in the background, takes care of that internal file shuffling for you.
If you go to Domains: FileManager you’ll see the new weebly folder it created. Because ezexample.com is my primary domain, it created the weebly folder in the root of my account. If I had created the sub-domain on another domain on my account (an addon domain), it would have created the sub-domain folder in that domain’s folder.
Now that I have the Weebly sub-domain created, I’m going to create a website on it with the Weebly Drag n Drop website builder, also found in your iPage control panel.
Click here to see how to make a website with the iPage Weebly Drag n Drop website builder.
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