cPanel, Creating domains

The most common use case for the Domains feature is to create development or staging domains to use to test changes before making those changes on your production website.

From your cPanel dashboard, find and click "Domains," then "Create a New Domain."

You will see a form allowing you to create a domain.

cPanel has introduced a Temporary Domain feature, though we do not recommend you use it. Temporary domains of this type will generate a url from random words. Instead, choose "Registered Domain" and enter your domain as domainname.accountname.web.illinois.edu. In the example above, for the account "illinoispie" we are creating a domain called "newdomain.illinoispie.web.illinois.edu." Despite selecting "Registered Domain," this type of domain name does not need to be registered in DNS. 

If you wish to create a domain that does not end in accountname.web.illinois.edu, you will need to talk to your unit IT Pro to get the domain registered before it will work with cPanel.

Next, will choose whether to check the box labeled "Share document root." If you choose to check this box, your new domain will be an alias for the account's primary domain and serve the same content as the primary domain. This is less common.

If you do not check the box, you will be prompted to enter the document root for the new domain. A folder matching the domain name will be suggested, and we recommend you keep that as the document root name. Files and/or software placed in this folder will be served to visitors when the visit your new domain.

Lastly, click "Submit" and you domain will be created. It will take about 5 minutes before your new domain will be ready to use. Once it is ready, you can use it to install, clone, or stage software with Softaculous or to upload files to the document root using any of the ways you normally work with files in your cPanel account.