Subdomains for test sites & more

A subdomain is a name which resides underneath your primary domain. For example, we run our blog as a subdomain to serversaurus.com.au – ie. blog.serversaurus.com.au.

Subdomains are great ways to create subsites and segments from your main site, as well as being extremely useful for testing. For example, if your website was mygreatwebsite.com.au, and you wanted to create a duplicate environment for testing new features, additions, and design modifications without touching your live site, you could create test.mygreatwebsite.com.au. In this case, you would upload an exact copy of your live site, and use it as a testbed, before pushing changes to your live site. This is best practice for the web, and you can easily create a subdomain for testing or for site segmentation within the control panel, as follows:

Note: to follow this guide you will need your cPanel login credentials. If you have forgotten your cPanel credentials, they were included in the original Welcome to Serversaurus email which you should be able to find in your inbox otherwise follow these instructions on how to update your cPanel password.

1. Login to your control panel (ie. yourwebsite.com.au/cpanel), navigate to the Domains section and select Subdomains:

2. Enter your desired subdomain. The Document Root box will be automatically populated, however you can change this to anything you desire:

The Document Root field is the folder name which will hold the files for your new subsite. For example, if the Document Root was test123, you would upload your files into public_html/test123.

Often subdomains propagate very quickly (sometimes instantly), however they can sometimes be prone to DNS propagation delays.

If your DNS is not managed by Serversaurus namerservers, you will need to create an A and WWW record within the DNS zone of the current DNS manager.

If you encounter any issues, as always, get in touch with support!