HostMonster Web Hosting Package

Don’t be fooled by some unethical Hostmonster affiliates that tell you Hostmonster users are getting free web templates downloads. There are quite a lot of blogpost and articles promoting Hostmonster’s hosting services by listing ‘Free Web Templates by DreamTemplate‘ as one of the incentives for Hostmonster sign ups.

The truth about Hostmonster’s free web templates

However, that’s not the truth entirely.

When HM users sign into their cPanel, they’ll see a link pointing to DreamTemplate at the top of the page (refer figure below) under ‘Partners’ category.

From my understanding the link works as strategic partnership for Hostmonster with DreamTemplate, where HM users are referred to DreamTemplate for web templates download. It’s in fact good to have the link embedded in the cPanel interface as it provides a short cut for the users who are in need. Unfortunately, the smart (but unethical) HM affiliates create an ‘illusion’ that confuse consumers that this is a special promotional item.

So hey, if you’re signing up HM because you think there’re free templates to be grabbed - don’t. The offer with Dream Template doesn’t get any better for HM users. DreamTemplate users get the same package with the same price ($59.95) with or without a Hostmonster memberships.

About DreamTemplate

DreamTemplate offers unlimited downloads on various templates (Web, Flash, Word, PowerPoint, Clipart, and so on) with just one time payment. At the time of writing, there are over 3,000 web templates available in the company stock. You can visit DreamTemplate.com to learn more.

Domain names is cheap. In fact, it’s too cheap that many webmasters bought too many of it and have no idea what to do with them. This is explains why I got questions on having multiple domains pointing to one single website.

So, back to the question: Can you have multiple domains pointing to the same website hosted at Hostmonster? The answer is yes, you can have multiple domains point to the same site or even to a same directory on your site.

How to have multiple domains pointing to the same website?

“But how?”, the next question follows.

Well first you have to make sure that all domains are pointing to the appropriate name servers, for example ns1.hostmonster.com and ns2.hostmonster.com for my website here. Allow sufficient time for the DNS to propogate across the Internet.

Next you’ll have to add your domains at Hostmonster - you’ll have two options for this in order to have multiple domain names pointing to the same site. Say abc.com is your main site; and you wish to have your other site, xyz.com, to point to your main site. What you can do it:

1. Redirect using parked domain

A Parked Domain is a domain name that points to the same directory as your main domain. Thus for our case, by adding xyz.com as your parked domain, the website will redirect users to abc.com everytime they come to the parked website.

To add a parked domain, you can login to HostMosnter cPanel, then go to Domain Manager > Parked Domain > Assign Domain > Choose ‘Parked Domain’ option and input all the necessary info. Click ‘Add Domain’ whenever you’re ready.

2. Website Redirect

Another way to redirect your users from xyz.com to abc.com is by setting up a redirect on the sub site. First, add your sub domain, xyz.com, as addon domain in your Hostmonster account. Next you can login to your Hostmonster cPanel account and go to “Redirect”. Key in xyz.com in the first column; and abc.com in the second column as the target of our redirect.

As reference, figure below shows the redirect setup page at Hostmonster. The setup page is actually an easy-installation on your .htaccess file.

You can setup the same operation without its help by modifying a file named ‘.htaccess’ in your server root folder. A simple code like below works the same in redirecting xyz.com to abc.com.

RewriteEngine On
rewritecond %{http_host} ^xyz.com
rewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.abc.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Alternatively, you can use a server side code to setup the redirection. A one line PHP code on top of the index file at xyz.com will work perfect.

<?php
header(”Location: http://abc.com”);
exit;
?>

As a rule of thumb in web maintenance, website should be back up regularly.

At HostMonster, the backup process is pretty quick-n-easy and will give you peace of mind. Follow these simple steps showed below and then keep all your web files in a safe place. In case of necessary, you might want to store your files in multiple locations.

Image guides for website backup at HostMonster

First, look for the backup button at HostMonster control panel.

Select daily for your backups downloads.

Click ‘Save’ at the prompt out to download all your web files to your local computer.

Select the desired directory you wish to store the web files and press the ‘Save’ button.

Click ‘Close’ whenever the download is completed.

And there, your website backup is successful.

Kinda dummy guide huh? (graphic source from: HostMonster)