There are certain times where you need to work on a website at Reclaim Hosting in advance of the domain being pointed at our server. Perhaps you are migrating content and want to ensure that it looks correct, or you plan to setup a new WordPress site before transferring a domain from a previous host. Reclaim Hosting allows you to create subdomains of reclaim.hosting within your cPanel that will let you work on a site in advance of using a top-level domain.
Initial Signup
When signing up for a new hosting plan you will find the option to have the hosting account run from a subdomain of reclaim.hosting. Choose this option if you plan to transfer a top level domain later on and would like to use your hosting account immediately to get started with building your site.
Adding a Development URL to cPanel
If you already have a cPanel account that you'd like to map a reclaim.hosting development subdomain to, you will do this from the Addon Domains area of cPanel.
The New Domain Name will be the subdomain of your choosing of reclaim.hosting (it does need to be unique so get creative). The second field Subdomain you can ignore as this is a legacy feature of cPanel. The third field Document Root is the folder that the domain should be mapped to. If mapping the domain to your main hosting account domain choose public_html, otherwise specify the folder that contains the files you want to load from the development URL.
Once you've added the development URL it should begin resolving within a matter of minutes.
WordPress and Absolute URLs
Some software such as WordPress has absolute URLs stored in the database that may be pointing to the old domain that is not yet live on our server and not the development URL. WordPress has a guide at Changing the Site URL on how to change the install to use a development URL. The easiest way is to modify your wp-config.php file and add the following two lines...
define('WP_HOME','http://devurl.reclaim.hosting');
define('WP_SITEURL','http://devurl.reclaim.hosting');
With this method you can access the site from the development URL and when you are ready to remove that you can just delete those two lines from wp-config.php.
If you are working with an install via Installatron at Reclaim Hosting you can also go to My Apps in cPanel and click the wrench icon next to an install and edit the Location URL.
Removing a Development URL from cPanel
Once you are done using a development URL, you will need to remove it. How you do so will depend on how the domain is set up in your cPanel account.
Replacing Primary Domain
If your development URL is the domain you signed your account up under, you will need a permanent domain to switch your account to. You can point externally bought domains to Reclaim's nameservers...
ns1.reclaimhosting.com
ns2.reclaimhosting.com
Alternatively, you can purchase the domain through Reclaim. Once you have the new domain available, you can reach out to our Support Team (support@reclaimhosting.com) and we can help make the switch to a new domain.
Removing Addon Domain
If your development URL is an additional domain added to your account, then removing it is easy.
First, make sure you do not have any Installatron Applications under that URL. If you would like to move those, you can clone them to a different URL. Once this has been done, you can remove the domain by going to the Addon Domains area in cPanel...
and selecting Remove on the same line as the development URL.
You will be asked to confirm and then you should be good to go!
