A subdomain is a separate part of your domain and is most often used to host a website affiliated to your main website.

This article shows the different uses of subdomains and explains how to create subdomains on your web hosting package at TransIP.

The different uses of subdomains

There are many ways to use a subdomain. Below you can find some of the most popular applications.

Use a subdomain to host a webshop

Webshops usually use different Content Management Systems (CMS) and may cause higher loads on servers than 'normal' web servers. For that reason you may want to consider hosting your webshop seperately on a subdomain.

This way you can keep both websites running independently, while still using the same domain name.

Take note: It's perfectly possible to host a relatively small webshop on our web hosting servers. You can choose to host it on either your main domain or a subdomain.

Keep in mind that our web hosting servers are located on a shared hosting platform. If your webshop is hosted on a web hosting package and its load is too high, this will affect other users on that server as well. This means that larger webshops are not suited for web hosting packages at TransIP.

If you wish to host a larger webshop on a (sub)domain, we recommend hosting it on one of our VPS services. Although our VPS services are offered as self-managed, our Knowledge Base has several tutorials to help you on your way.

Redirect visitors to a website based on their device

Subdomains can also be used to redirect visitors to a different view of your website, based on the device they use to visit your website.

For instance, when visiting yourwebsite.com, desktop users will stay on yourwebsite.com, while mobile users can be redirected to m.yourwebsite.com. The website on m.yourwebsite.com can then be configured to be fully responsive for mobile visitors, as it is a different address than the main website.

Direct your visitors based on their location or language

Using subdomains is a solid way to redirect visitors based on their location or language. 

For instance, you can let your website check the area of your visitor and direct them to a subdomain specifically tailored to (the language of) that region. For instance, you could identify French speaking visitors and redirect them to the French version of your website located on fr.yourwebsite.com.

As you can see there are many uses for subdomains. Take note that we do not offer direct support on these applications. A lot of information can be found online; if you wish to configure a subdomain in any of the ways mentioned above, please consult the online documentation for these applications. 

Creating a subdomain on your web hosting package

When you own a web hosting package, you can create a subdomain with just a few easy steps. Once the subdomain is created, you can directly create a seperate website on it.

Step 1

Log in to the control panel and click 'Shared Hosting' in the menu. Next, select your domain below 'Products'.

At the top of the page, click the 'Site' tab, followed by 'Domains & SSL'.

Step 2

Create your subdomain by clicking on '+ Add' next to 'Websites' on the right side of the screen.

A screen will pop up in which you can add the subdomain. If you want to add the subdomain 'blog' to your domain yourdomainname.com, enter blog next to yourdomainname.com under 'Domain name'.

What you ener below 'Path' determines in which folder the website files for the created subdomain will be placed. For ease of file management, we recommend entering '/subsites/subdomain.domainname.com' here. This means a folder called 'subdomain.domainname.nl' will be created in your 'subsites' folder.

In our example we created the subdomein 'blog' for transiptutorials.com. Therefore, we enter '/subsites/blog.transiptutorials.nl' below 'Path'. Click 'Save' to create your subdomain.

Manage your subdomain with SFTP

After creating your subdomain, you can use SFTP to add the files of your subdomain's website. 

You can add files via 'File manager' in your control panel or by using SFTP software like Filezilla or Cyberduck.

By using one of the methods mentioned above, you will find the newly created subdomain in the folder 'Subsites'. Files uploaded to that folder will be visible when visiting the actual subdomain.

Seperate folders uploaded to the folder of your subdomain will also become visible when visiting the subdomain. For instance, if you've uploaded the folder 'books' to the subdomain folder 'shop', you can reach that page by going to shop.yourwebsite.com/books/.

Check your DNS settings

Once you've created a subdomain and uploaded your website files to it, be sure to check if the website is visible on that subdomain. If that's not the case, we recommend checking your domain name's DNS settings.

If your domain name uses the web hosting package's DNS settings, the subdomain will become active within 24 hours.

In case you've added DNS records to your domain name, you may have to add a seperate DNS record for the subdomain. Use the following DNS record to activate it:

• Name: subdomain
• Type: A
• Value: IP address of your web hosting package

You can find the IP address by going to the 'Domains & SSL' overview and clicking the three dots next to your created subdomain followed by 'Show IP addresses'.

Use the article 'The DNS settings of my web hosting package' to read more on the DNS records of your web hosting package.

Use the article 'Changing DNS and nameservers via the control panel' to read how to configure DNS records for your domain name.

This article showed you the uses of subdomains and how to create a subdomain on your web hosting package.

In case you have any questions regarding this article, do not hesitate to contact our support department. You can reach them by using the 'Contact us' button at the bottom of this page.

If you want to discuss this article with other uses, please leave a comment below.