Do Xara websites have script that connects to MySQL?

**Arpeggio** · 25 July 2012, 09:01 PM

Depending on whether an add-on domain is bad for SEO (which I am still trying to find out...?) I am looking into the possibility of making my add-on domain and its content the main public/html and vice versa because currently the site I want to SEO is the add-on and the primary one is irrelavent to SEO.

I contacted support for my webhost and they told me the following...

"We strongly suggest against changing your primary domain or username on your account. Changing this information can, and likely will, cause issues that are your responsibility to resolve. The issues that are caused when changing this information are not server or hosting issues, but generally script configuration or site configuration issues.

Here is a short list of potential issues, keep in mind that this list is not all-inclusive and there are other issues you may face that are not listed here:
1. Your script may be configured to expect a specific domain. When changing the main domain the script will attempt to redirect your users to the old domain which can cause issues.
2. Many scripts connect to MySQL databases and the connection details include your cPanel username - changing this can cause all of your scripts that use MySQL to quit working until you manually update all of their configuration files.
3. If you wish to switch a main and add-on domain, you will need to also relocate the appropriate files for each. Some scripts have the full file path in the configuration file or database and this may need updated manually.
4. Email and FTP usernames will change, causing you to need to reconfigure any email or FTP clients to connect to the account"

(I don't use FTP but would need to re-configure Email) I'd like to ask if the issues 1 and 3 are relevant for a Xara site? As far as I know the site is "self-contained", I simply upload to the webhost (via cPanel) and it takes it from the index page, nothing is configured within the site related to the domain name. If my assumption is right then I can just get them to change my primary domain then swap the files for each sites around myself? Regarding 2 I also asked about changing my username because that is a domain name that is no longer relevant (although I'm not sure if that makes any difference to SEO). I thought the thread title might summarize the terms for anyone who understands the issue, am a getting out of my depth, any advice much appreciated.

I'm using WebDesigner7

**Drwyd** · 25 July 2012, 09:33 PM

Do Xara websites have script that connects to MySQL?

No

**ckh** · 25 July 2012, 11:28 PM

A search engine or a bot wouldn't be able to tell if a domain is an addon domain or not, so it shouldn't affect SEO in the least bit. The only thing they'd be able to figure out is if the addon domain has a unique IP or not which would indicate it may be on the same server as other domains, which shouldn't affect SEO either.

It sounds like you are considering changing the main domain and/or the username on the cPanel account. What your host said is basically true.

On a cPanel server, the mysql database name and the database username prepends the cPanel username to the name you type in. If you create a db name of "golf" for example and your cPanel username is "fred", then the resulting name would be fred_golf. Same would go for the mysql username.

If you have a script installed and it uses the absolute path to a file, like a cron would, then the script could "break" if you change the location of the script and/or change the username. Going back to "fred" as the cPanel username, the absolute path to say your index.php file in the webroot directory for your main domain would be:

/home/fred/public_html/index.php

If a script or cron is using that path and is configured that way and you change the username to charlie, then the path would change:

/home/charlie/public_html/index.php

which would cause a script configuration or cron command problem as the path would now be incorrect.

If you made the main domain an addon domain, by default cPanel uses the domain name as the directory name it creates for the webroot directory in the public_html directory. So, moving golf.com to an addon directory would also change the path so something like:

/home/fred/public_html/golf.com/index.php

which again would cause problems in crons and if a script is using an absolute path.

plain html sites wouldn't have any problem running from one webroot directory to another with or without a new username, so whether it's an addon domain or not, there wouldn't be a problem as long as the directory structure is maintained.

IE you have an images directory for images so that directory would need to be moved also to the new webroot.

**Arpeggio** · 26 July 2012, 11:02 AM

Thanks both. Given that it has no effect on SEO I think I will leave it as it is, but this is good to know if in the future I decide to change it.

ckh, you say: "plain html sites wouldn't have any problem running from one webroot directory to another with or without a new username, so whether it's an addon domain or not, there wouldn't be a problem as long as the directory structure is maintained."

So basically Xara sites as plain html wouldn't cause any problems and are not dependant on any information or settings within the hosting account, simply put it in the correct directory and it picks it up from the index file for the home page? Directory structure being something like /home/me/public_html/mysite.com/index.php ?

**Arpeggio** · 26 July 2012, 11:03 AM

Whoops double post

**ckh** · 26 July 2012, 04:35 PM

Plain html pages should be fine. You used .php in your example, which could contain full path info to another file, but, I believe you were referring to .htm and .html files, which wouldn't contain any path info, just links, like the menu would to other pages which shouldn't be affected as long as you are going from webroot to webroot.