Remove requirement for a subdomain when creating an addon domain
Open Discussion
As a cPanel user, a server administrator, and a web hosting provider, I would like cPanel to allow the addition of addon domains, and move the creation a related subdomain to an option, to improve usability in any domain-related interface.
These unnecessary and unused subdomains can litter the cPanel interface. I'm sure there's a reason behind their use but I'm also thinking the reason is probably historical and no longer relevant in 2017, perhaps I'm wrong though.
I like this idea 
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I totally agree, most of my clients have come from other panels and find it very confusing to be confronted with a multiplied amount of domains when creating accounts for mail, ftp and also when checking AutoSSL-status. Many clients have 5-10 domains, so when they create new accounts for mail, ftp etc. the list of sub-domains gets really really cluttered.
When creating new mail- or ftp-accounts, the user should really only see the relevant assets such as main/primary-domain, addon-domains and those sub-domains that they have created actively.
Any subdomain related to his primary-domain should be removed or at least they should be made invisible for better UX.
I totally agree, most of my clients have come from other panels and find it very confusing to be confronted with a multiplied amount of domains when creating accounts for mail, ftp and also when checking AutoSSL-status. Many clients have 5-10 domains, so when they create new accounts for mail, ftp etc. the list of sub-domains gets really really cluttered.
When creating new mail- or ftp-accounts, the user should really only see the relevant assets such as main/primary-domain, addon-domains and those sub-domains that they have created actively.
Any subdomain related to his primary-domain should be removed or at least they should be made invisible for better UX.
Would like to leave a bit more information for any other users who see this and are wondering what is going on.
Say your cPanel account is for example.com. You want example2.com to redirect to example.com, so you add it to cPanel as an addon domain.
cPanel creates the subdomain example2.example.com. And in addition, as mentioned by Sascha, you will see the following entries added to the AutoSSL system.
http://www.example2.example.com
cpanel.example2.example.com
whm.example2.example.com
webdisk.example2.example.com
cpanel.example2.com
whm.example2.com
webdisck.example2.com
That is a lot of extra entries that you didn't want. The good news is the team at cPanel is aware of this and already on-board, it will just take a lot of refactoring on their end.
Would like to leave a bit more information for any other users who see this and are wondering what is going on.
Say your cPanel account is for example.com. You want example2.com to redirect to example.com, so you add it to cPanel as an addon domain.
cPanel creates the subdomain example2.example.com. And in addition, as mentioned by Sascha, you will see the following entries added to the AutoSSL system.
http://www.example2.example.com
cpanel.example2.example.com
whm.example2.example.com
webdisk.example2.example.com
cpanel.example2.com
whm.example2.com
webdisck.example2.com
That is a lot of extra entries that you didn't want. The good news is the team at cPanel is aware of this and already on-board, it will just take a lot of refactoring on their end.
Actually I wish cPanel to completely renew the way our clients have to deal with domains:
1. Replace "Addon Domains" with "Domains" (terminology & location)2. Stop creating Sub-Domains for each Addon-Domain - this is crazy stupid from clients perspective: They only want to add a new domain to their account for websites, mail etc. Wherever they need to setup a new account (mail or ftp) or website (via Softaculous) for this domain, they are confronted with a list of 1. primary-domain 2. addon-domain 3. subdomain-or-addon-domain.primary-domain, so they raise support-tickets to ask "What is this under 3.???" and its really really getting worse as soon as your clients add a few more "addon" domains. Makes it very hard to onboard clients who come from other hosting-panels!
Why don't you just hide those additional sub-domains? They are not usefull from clients view at all, but rather disturbing. I know that your system "needs" them, so keep them alive for the system, but hide them from our clients please
Actually I wish cPanel to completely renew the way our clients have to deal with domains:
1. Replace "Addon Domains" with "Domains" (terminology & location)2. Stop creating Sub-Domains for each Addon-Domain - this is crazy stupid from clients perspective: They only want to add a new domain to their account for websites, mail etc. Wherever they need to setup a new account (mail or ftp) or website (via Softaculous) for this domain, they are confronted with a list of 1. primary-domain 2. addon-domain 3. subdomain-or-addon-domain.primary-domain, so they raise support-tickets to ask "What is this under 3.???" and its really really getting worse as soon as your clients add a few more "addon" domains. Makes it very hard to onboard clients who come from other hosting-panels!
Why don't you just hide those additional sub-domains? They are not usefull from clients view at all, but rather disturbing. I know that your system "needs" them, so keep them alive for the system, but hide them from our clients please
Completely agree -- was just dealing with this yesterday and was not able to accomplish what I wanted without a bunch of needless additional subdomains.
Completely agree -- was just dealing with this yesterday and was not able to accomplish what I wanted without a bunch of needless additional subdomains.
This can get even worse if you have 2-3 subdomains with different .tld.
adding domain.com, domain.org. domain.example, domain.org.example will get a conflict of folders when parked/addon multiple of these..
This can get even worse if you have 2-3 subdomains with different .tld.
adding domain.com, domain.org. domain.example, domain.org.example will get a conflict of folders when parked/addon multiple of these..
This really causes a huge mess. Obviously separate domains are totally unrelated, why would subdomains be created on the first domain used when setting up cPanel. If anyone wanted that, they would create the subdomains themselves. When you have 10 or more domains it's hard to navigate through huge lists of nonsense subdomains while trying to find the couple that I created. Please address this. Thank you.
This really causes a huge mess. Obviously separate domains are totally unrelated, why would subdomains be created on the first domain used when setting up cPanel. If anyone wanted that, they would create the subdomains themselves. When you have 10 or more domains it's hard to navigate through huge lists of nonsense subdomains while trying to find the couple that I created. Please address this. Thank you.
This is creating a lot of mess and when you are using Let's Encrypt we are asking for non used SSL for non used subdomains. Also is is rly easy to exceed LE limits.
This is creating a lot of mess and when you are using Let's Encrypt we are asking for non used SSL for non used subdomains. Also is is rly easy to exceed LE limits.
I have a domain, suppose it's name example.com. I have 3 other clients and their domains are also hosted in my server. By the way, mine is a shared server. Now, let's assume the other 3 domains names are dot.com, url.com and http.com respectively. Now, after adding their domains as 'add-on domains', 3 other subdomains have been added automatically, named, dot.example.com, url.example.com and http.example.com and this is confusing. There should be only dot.com, url.com and http.com and should not be any subdomain because if I want to create some subdomains for my own use those will be like developer.example.com, store.example.com and if my clients want to do the same, create some subdomains for their own, it will be a mess and very quickly my subdomain quota will be exausted. So, please rectify or redesign it so that domains can be added as 'domains' only and no subdomains would be created automatically. You can mark the 'Primary' domain as 'Primary'. I know you can do it. Maybe you are afraid of your huge customerbase who might have to reconfigure their websites which may raise a negative impact. But, history has the proof that every positive action got some negative reactions but they have been implemented for greater good. Please do this and you will not regret it and cPanel will get much more acceptance without raising any eye brow of the migrating customers from other platforms who have not faced this type of awkward mess.
Regards.
I have a domain, suppose it's name example.com. I have 3 other clients and their domains are also hosted in my server. By the way, mine is a shared server. Now, let's assume the other 3 domains names are dot.com, url.com and http.com respectively. Now, after adding their domains as 'add-on domains', 3 other subdomains have been added automatically, named, dot.example.com, url.example.com and http.example.com and this is confusing. There should be only dot.com, url.com and http.com and should not be any subdomain because if I want to create some subdomains for my own use those will be like developer.example.com, store.example.com and if my clients want to do the same, create some subdomains for their own, it will be a mess and very quickly my subdomain quota will be exausted. So, please rectify or redesign it so that domains can be added as 'domains' only and no subdomains would be created automatically. You can mark the 'Primary' domain as 'Primary'. I know you can do it. Maybe you are afraid of your huge customerbase who might have to reconfigure their websites which may raise a negative impact. But, history has the proof that every positive action got some negative reactions but they have been implemented for greater good. Please do this and you will not regret it and cPanel will get much more acceptance without raising any eye brow of the migrating customers from other platforms who have not faced this type of awkward mess.
Regards.
I fully agree. It is the most confusing thing ever. It makes it utterly confusing to anyone familiar with DNS as there is no logical reason that I know of where these records should automatically be added simply because you want to add another domain onto your server.
If cPanel is planning to change it, they can't do it soon enough, but I wonder if we are still going to be left with a mess to clean up even when the change is implemented.
I fully agree. It is the most confusing thing ever. It makes it utterly confusing to anyone familiar with DNS as there is no logical reason that I know of where these records should automatically be added simply because you want to add another domain onto your server.
If cPanel is planning to change it, they can't do it soon enough, but I wonder if we are still going to be left with a mess to clean up even when the change is implemented.
Just to highlight please don't add all your domains in the public_html folder else you will get two paths: 1) domain2.domain.com plus 2) domain.com/domain2.
Please make sure you add any new domains to / (root) folder when adding a new domain after the main domain is added. hope this helps! (I am also waiting for cpanel to change the addon domains setting where sub domains are not needed for every new domain we add)
Just to highlight please don't add all your domains in the public_html folder else you will get two paths: 1) domain2.domain.com plus 2) domain.com/domain2.
Please make sure you add any new domains to / (root) folder when adding a new domain after the main domain is added. hope this helps! (I am also waiting for cpanel to change the addon domains setting where sub domains are not needed for every new domain we add)
Remove the subdomains that cpanel generates cause is just a confusion for when we are choosing a domain to build a website in wordpress. remove that list please is not user friendly at all or put somewhere in the cpanel not in the place we have to choose the domains to use. Very bad. That's the only thing i really hate on cpanel.
Remove the subdomains that cpanel generates cause is just a confusion for when we are choosing a domain to build a website in wordpress. remove that list please is not user friendly at all or put somewhere in the cpanel not in the place we have to choose the domains to use. Very bad. That's the only thing i really hate on cpanel.
We are actively working to decrease confusion with the domain nomenclatures. The domains UI in cPanel, for example, avoids referring to domains as addon, subdomain, or alias, while still respecting those admin-dictated configurations and limits. It also hides the associated subdomains for addon domains by default. The older interfaces for creating domains in cPanel are already deprecated as of v102, and will be removed in a near future version.
We have other projects in the works that will allow us to automatically ignore or hide domains users don't care about (service subdomains that don't resolve for example).
Stay tuned and we will update as we have more to share. And please keep providing feedback!
We are actively working to decrease confusion with the domain nomenclatures. The domains UI in cPanel, for example, avoids referring to domains as addon, subdomain, or alias, while still respecting those admin-dictated configurations and limits. It also hides the associated subdomains for addon domains by default. The older interfaces for creating domains in cPanel are already deprecated as of v102, and will be removed in a near future version.
We have other projects in the works that will allow us to automatically ignore or hide domains users don't care about (service subdomains that don't resolve for example).
Stay tuned and we will update as we have more to share. And please keep providing feedback!
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