Pre-signup questions: account user name and cpanel

[greenman]

I'm interested in bluehost and have some picky questions about Cpanel, being new to it.

1. CPanel is set up so that your first domain, say domain1.com, is at /home/user/public_html/. But all future domains, say domain2.com, are at /home/user/public_html/domain2.com/. So, if I own domain1.com and have a client I've hosted at domain2.com and another client hosted on domain3.com these clients can also easily be reached at http://www.domain1.com/domain2.com/ and http://www.domain1.com/domain3.com/ respectively. My two clients likely have little or nothing to do with each other, but end up looking like they are affiliated because they can be easily reached, one or the other through domain1.com. I don't really like that setup or what it may imply for my clients.

Once my account is set up, I'd like to take domain1.com and put it at /home/user/public_html/domain1.com so that no domain points to /home/user/public_html/ and that all domains are only reachable from /home/user/public_html/domainX.com. If that is not possible, I'd like to set up domain1.com to be bogus, with no dns pointing to it. What's the best way to approach this?

2. On the signup form, I don't see any way to decide on an an account user name - If I sign up with bluehost, do they create my username based on my first domain name? For instance, if I'm were the owner of googlewatch.com, and I signed up with that domain, would I end up with 'googlewa' as my user name? Or, do I get to create a preferred user name? If so, how long can it be? I know it sounds silly, but if I owned googlewatch.com, I wouldn't want to be user 'googlewa.' Worse, if there were already a 'googlewa' derived from 'googlewasher.com' I wouldn't want to be 'googlew1'. What's the deal on this?

3. Sometimes it's nice to be able to allow a client to have a private ftp area for their documents below the web, perhaps at /home/user/client1/. This should be easily achieveable in CPanel, and looks like it is, yes?

4. When I set up mysql, I'd rather not reach it from localhost. Can I set up a subdomain: mysql.domain1.com, mydb.domain2.com, etc., that will allow me to access databases from Dreamweaver or the host server with equal ease?

[Early Out]

My two clients likely have little or nothing to do with each other, but end up looking like they are affiliated because they can be easily reached, one or the other through domain1.com. I don't really like that setup or what it may imply for my clients.But you're the only person who will know that the domain2 and domain3 files can be accessed that way. To anyone other than the account owner, it will be almost impossible to figure out that www.domain2.com is actually an add-on domain on the domain1 account.

I suppose it would be possible to set up some .htaccess rules so that pointing to www.domain1.com/domain2 would go into a black hole.

On the signup form, I don't see any way to decide on an an account user name - If I sign up with bluehost, do they create my username based on my first domain name? For instance, if I'm were the owner of googlewatch.com, and I signed up with that domain, would I end up with 'googlewa' as my user name? Or, do I get to create a preferred user name? If so, how long can it be? I know it sounds silly, but if I owned googlewatch.com, I wouldn't want to be user 'googlewa.' Worse, if there were already a 'googlewa' derived from 'googlewasher.com' I wouldn't want to be 'googlew1'. What's the deal on this?BH assigns you a user name. I guess they could change it, but since it's used only to login to the Control Panel and FTP, most users don't care what it is. In fact, if you access the Control Panel via the bluehost.com main page, you login with your domain name, instead of the username. So, once you've saved your username in the FTP client of your choice, you'll never see it again.

Sometimes it's nice to be able to allow a client to have a private ftp area for their documents below the web, perhaps at /home/user/client1/. This should be easily achieveable in CPanel, and looks like it is, yes?Yes, you can set up FTP accounts for clients, pointing to specific subdirectories.

When I set up mysql, I'd rather not reach it from localhost. Can I set up a subdomain: mysql.domain1.com, mydb.domain2.com, etc., that will allow me to access databases from Dreamweaver or the host server with equal ease?Don't know about that one - someone else may check in with some info.

[felgall]

and ther links don't have to be domain1/domain2 and domain1/domain3 they can be domain1/xyz and domain1/somethingelse since the folder names don't have to have any connection to the domain names.

[greenman]

Thanks for your replies.

Still, one important question eludes me: can I relocate domain1.com from /home/user/public_html/ to /home/user/public_html/domain1.com ?

What if I want to delete or remove the parent domain?

[felgall]

There are instructions in the support center on how to move the main domain into a folder as well as several threads in the forum here that provide alternative ways to do it.

If you want to change or remove your main domain then you'd need to contact support to make the change for you as all accounts are attached to the main domain.

[online]

I had a similar issue in the recent past, concerning a change of domain and I raised the issue in a support ticket with the BlueHost Support.
I hereby quote underneath their reply to my query, with the hope that it answers part of your question.
In fact the BlueHost Support helped me out through a LiveChat within minutes of providing them the necessary verification data.

"We can rename your account but please be advised that in changing the main domain or renaming the main account, the system is going to reset your account to the default settings. This will delete all databases, emails, sub-domains, etc.

If you would like to rename your account, please reply with the last 4 digits of your credit card or the password to the account for verification of ownership. We will also need to main domain on your account, the new domain to be setup and we need to know if you already own the domain or if we need to register the domain for you. We will then proceed with this request accordingly."

[felgall]

The part missing from their description is for you to backup everything from your site first before they make the change and then restore it again afterwards. Everything in your account will be down between when you run the backup and when the restore finishes but it will result in everything you didn't want changed being back as it was once you are finished.

[greenman]

Thanks everyone.