Create a Subdomain in cPanel

For clarity’s sake, a subdirectory would be something like yoursite.com/blog/.  A subdomain would be something like blog.yoursite.com.  See the difference?

Why use a Subdomain?

Choosing whether to use a subdomain or a subdirectory is a personal preference, like WWW or non-WWW.  There ARE SEO implications you should be aware of.  Specifically, search engines like Google look at subdirectories as simply a place within the greater website.  However, they see subdomains as a seperate, but related website to the main site.  For this reason, it’s a good idea to keep things tanglentally-related to your website in a subdomain and things very releated to your site on a subdirectory.

Examples:

• Your CRM: sales.yoursite.com
• Your Blog: yoursite.com/blog/

Anywho.  Let’s get to it.

How to Create a Subdomain

Here’s how to create a subdomain in cPanel, a popular web host manager.  We’ll be showing screenshots from the jHost cPanel, but yours should look pretty similar.

1. 1. Login to cPanel (probably something like yoursite.com/cpanel)
   2. Click on Subdomains under the cPanel “Domains” section
   3. Enter the name of the subdomain, like “blog”
   4. It’ll automatically create a subdirectory by the same name inside of /public_html/
   5. Click the Create button

Then, you might want to go grab a coffee or something.  It can take at least an hour for the DNS changes to propagate.  Sometimes it can take as long as 4.