Step 1: Log in to your cPanel. There’s a lot of ways to do this, but the sure-fire easiest way is to log in to your Client Area, then open your cPanel.

Step 2: Look for the Metrics section (6th from the top of cPanel) and click Raw Access.

Step 3: When the Raw Access panel has opened, click the domain for which you want to download raw access logs.

After clicking the domain link, your access logs will be downloaded in a tar.gz format.

You can use a program like 7Zip or a command-line utility to unpackage these files and import them into the application of your choice for further examination.

What is Regex?

Before going further, RegEx is short for a regular expression – it is defined as a specific string of text used to describe a search pattern. It helps to match, locate, and manage text.

.htaccess RegEx Characters Explained

The following table showcases different regex characters that are specific to .htaccess files.

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What is a Primary Domain?

Your primary domain is the main domain name on the cPanel account. It’s the domain you use when you first order your hosting service. The document root for your primary domain; it’s always the public_html folder.

What is an Addon Domain?

An Addon domain is an additional domain that will display a completely different website and not the same site as in the primary domain.

Let’s suppose you MyDogSite.com, but you also want to launch a new site called MyRabbitSite.com. You would do this using an addon domain. Before adding an addon domain in cPanel, make sure that your domain name is registered.

Tutorial: How to Create an Addon Domain in cPanel

What is a Parked Domain or Alias?

A Parked Domain or Alias Domain is a domain name that leads to the same site as another domain name. The domain is, in essence, parked on top of the primary domain name.

For example, suppose we have a domain name my-site.com. If we park my-site.net on top of the .com domain, a visitor to our site will be able to access the site from either the .com or the .org address. The visitor won’t notice any difference in the website at all no matter which one she chooses.

Tutorial: How to Create a Parked Domain (Alias) in cPanel

What is a subdomain?

Subdomains, though, will work off of your existing domain names. They can be used for the same purposes as regular domain names; they just have an extra part in front.

Another example could be if you created two subdomains dogs and rabbits on mypestore.com.

You’d visit those subdomains in your browser using http://dogs.mypetstore.com/and http://rabbits.mypetstore.com/, respectively.

You could set each subdomain to go to its own website or to go to a section of the main mypetstore.com site.

Tutorial: How to create a Subdomain in cPanel

That’s it! Now you know the difference between a Primary, Addon, Parked and Subdomain!

1) To begin, go ahead and log into your cPanel.

2) Okay, once you’ve logged into cPanel. Go to the File Manager.

You’ll see the contents of that folder show up on the right side of the screen. This is the document root for your primary domain; it’s always the public_html folder.

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How to find the document root for your addon domains in cPanel

1) To begin, go ahead and log into your cPanel.

2) After logging in, go to the Domains.

3) Next, you will find a list with all your hosted Domains, and listed beside is the Document Root path for each domain.

In the following example, the document root folder for the “mynewdomain.com” addon is in the account’s home directory under the “mynewdomain.com” folder.

How to find the document root for your addon domains in cPanel

1) To begin, go ahead and log into your cPanel.

2) After logging in, go to the Domains.

3) Next, you will find a list with all your hosted Domains, and listed beside is the Document Root path for each domain.

In the following example, the document root folder for the “blesta.cchostingdemos.com” addon is in the account’s home directory under the “blesta.cchostingdemos.com” folder.

That’s it! Now you know how to find the document root for your primary domain, addon domains, and subdomains.

HTTPS, displayed as a padlock icon in the web browser bar, indicates the SSL protocol is being used to send data between a web server and a website. Any website, especially those that require login credentials, and sensitive data, should use HTTPS.

How does HTTPS redirection work?

Let’s say you’ve just installed an SSL on your website, whether through our one-click Let’s Encrypt installer or one purchased through your Client Area.

The force HTTPS redirect feature in cPanel allows you to redirect visitors to the secure version of your website automatically.

How to force HTTP to HTTPS redirect in cPanel?

1. Go ahead and log in to cPanel.

2. Once in the cPanel dashboard, scroll down to the “Domain” section and click on the Domains icon.

Then the domains interface will appear, where you will see a list of all the domains on your cPanel account. You’ll see the “Force HTTPS Redirect” column.

3. Let’s locate the domain that you wish to redirect to HTTPS and set the appropriate force HTTPS redirect toggled to on, as in our example:

A success message will appear.

You can toggle several domains to enable or disable forced HTTPS redirects with the option at the top of the table. Please select the checkbox for each domain and select whether you want to toggle them all on or off.

4. Now, let’s go back and access your website. Notice how it redirects us to the secure version, and we see a secure lock symbol in the location bar.

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This means we’re using a secure connection to the site.

How to force HTTP to HTTPS redirect for Addon Domains?

One other aspect you need to know about this feature – Addon and parked domains inherit their settings from their associated domains.

1. Click the gear icon and “Show Associated Subdomains.”

2. The associated subdomain for that addon domain will appear. Set the appropriate force HTTPS redirect toggled to on. A success message will appear.

In our example, we have forced HTTPS for domain.com, which is added as an addon:

3. Now, let’s go back and access your website. Notice how it redirects us to the secure version, and we see a secure lock symbol in the location bar.

That means we’re using a secure connection to the site.

Resolving SSL Mixed Content Warnings

Once doing the redirect from HTTP to HTTPS, if you are facing SSL mixed content warnings, you only need to add the following lines of code to your site’s .htaccess file:

<ifModule mod_headers.c>
Header always set Content-Security-Policy "upgrade-insecure-requests;"
</IfModule>

Now let’s go back and access your website. Notice how it redirects us to the secure version, and we see a secure lock symbol in the location bar.

As always, we’re here if you have any questions!

When you wish to add an IDN domain in cPanel (parked/addon) or in WHM, you need to convert the domain name into Punycode for the encoded version of the domain name using a Unicode to Punycode Converter tool.

Then when the user enters a URL containing an IDN domain into the web browser, it will convert the IDN domain into Punycode and resolve that domain.

As an example, if the main domain is chemicloud.com and the addon domain is webhosting.com, the automatically created subdomain will be webhosting.chemicloud.com.

To hide the subdomain, you can choose to redirect the subdomain to a Not Found page, using .htaccess rule so any visitor that will visit webhosting.chemicloud.com will get a 404 Not Found page.

To do this, enter the following rules in the .htaccess file stored in your addon domain’s web root directory:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} webhosting.chemicloud.com$ 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ "https://chemicloud.com/404" [R=301,L] 
</IfModule>

Alternatively, you can achieve similar results by simply pointing the subdomain A record to a non-working IP address – something like 1.1.1.1. If you want to find out on how to manage your DNS with cPanel, just check this article.

If you notice any problems or if you need any help, please do not hesitate to contact at any time by opening a ticket from your client area or in LiveChat – we are 24/7 online!

This ensures data sent to and from your website is securely encrypted. Besides this, according to Google – HTTPS is now a ranking signal among some other factors.

If you are a ChemiCloud customer, you can easily redirect HTTP to HTTPS requests using the force HTTPS redirect feature in cPanel.

How to Manually Redirect HTTP Requests to HTTPS using .htaccess

However, if for some reason your website is not working after you enabled the force redirect in cPanel, you should try to do this via your .htaccess file.

1) Edit/Create a .htaccess file in the folder your site is being served from (normally public_html). You can easily edit the .htaccess file using an FTP client or through the online File Manager in cPanel.

2) Add the following code to the .htaccess file:

# BEGIN HTTPS Redirect
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
# END HTTPS Redirect

3) Save the file and check the results in your web browser by trying to access your site using standard HTTP rather than HTTPS.

If it is working correctly, you should be automatically redirected to https.

How to fix mixed content warnings (insecure requests)

Once doing the redirect from HTTP to HTTPS, if you are facing SSL mixed content warnings, you only need to add the following lines of code to your site’s .htaccess file:

# BEGIN Fix mixed content warnings
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
Header always set Content-Security-Policy "upgrade-insecure-requests;"
</IfModule>
# END Fix mixed content warnings

As always, our customer support team is here to answer any questions you may have!

For example, you can create a subdomain for your blog that is accessible through blog.domain.com.

How to create a Subdomain in cPanel

1) Locate the ‘DOMAINS’ section and click the Domains icon

2) Click on the Create A New Domain button

3) Enter the following information:

• Domain: enter the subdomain that you want to create

• Document root: leave the checkmark empty for the Share document root option.

• Home icon: choose a subdirectory for it in your account’s home directory (above public_html). This subdirectory will store your subdomain’s files.

5) The last step is to click Submit button.  The subdomain will be created.

From cPanel > Domains area, you can see the list of subdomains under your main account, and you can manage or delete these subdomains anytime needed.

That’s it! You now know how to create subdomains in cPanel.

This is useful, for example, to hold a domain that you will later sell, or to redirect traffic to another domain.

For example, you can make www.example.net and www.example.org show content from www.example.com.

How to create a parked domain in cPanel

1) Locate the ‘DOMAINS’ section and click the Domains icon

2) Click on the Create A New Domain button

Enter the following information:

• Domain: enter the domain name that you want to add

• Document root: Make sure that the Share document root option is checked.

From cPanel > Domains area you can see the list of parked domains under your main account and you can manage or delete these parked domains anytime is needed.

That’s it! You now know how to create parked domains in cPanel.