WebCom Domain Name Service (DNS) -- Create a Subdomain

This page describes how to use the Create a Subdomain service option. To access this or any other domain name service, log in to your account by clicking on "Control Panel" at the left of this page, and then select Domain Name Services from the main menu.

For more information about domain names at WebCom, please see our Domain Name Services documentation.

Description

Using this service, you can create subdomains (World Wide Web addresses such as "products.yourdomain.com") for domains that are currently active in your account. Subdomains can be configured to point to your www directory, or any of its subdirectories. For example, "products.yourdomain.com" can be configured to point to a different directory (and therefore different pages) than "www.yourdomain.com".

To create a new subdomain, simply fill out the subdomain creation form, and click on the "Create Subdomain" button at the bottom of the form. Before your subdomain will work for you, our system needs to add it to our name servers so that it will work on the Internet. Our name servers are updated every 24 hours. Therefore 24 hours may pass before your subdomain works for you. If it does not work after this time, contact support@webcom.com for assistance.

Explanation and Instructions for the components of this form:

• New subdomain name: Enter the subdomain that you would like to create, in lowercase, without the period. For instance, to create "products.yourdomain.com" place "products" in this field.

• Subdomains can only contain numbers, letters, and hyphens (-'s). All other characters (such as ! @ # $ % ^ & ; * ( . ) + = [ , ] { : } ` and ~) are not valid characters to use in sub domains.

• While there is no solid limit to how long a subdomain can be, the entire host name including the subdomain and the domain can only be 255 characters long, including any periods. Exceeding this limit violates DNS standards and will not function correctly.

• Parent domain: Select the domain that you are creating the subdomain for. To create "products.yourdomain.com", you would select "yourdomain.com" from the list of your domains.

• Directory: Directory that you would like the subdomain to point to. World Wide Web accesses to the subdomain will be directed to the files in this directory when the subdomain is active. Your subdomain can be pointed to your www directory, or any subdirectory of your www directory. (See Fig.1 below.) If you ever plan on using Microsoft FrontPage to manage your web site, please see our FrontPage documentation for important information about planning your subwebs.

Additional Notes

Fees

There is no fee for the creation of new subdomains, but there is a $4.95 monthly fee for the hosting of each WebCom subdomain. This fee will be automatically added to the next month's billing statement. Default subdomains (www, ftp, smtp, and pop) are exempt from this fee, unless you configure those domains for other than the default behavior. (For example, "pop.domain.ext" is automatically created when you register a domain, and it points to our email server. If you configure it to point to a web page instead, it will no longer be operating in its default role, and the $4.95 fee will apply.)

Restrictions

You can only create subdomains for domains hosted by WebCom, in your WebCom account. You cannot create subdomains for domains hosted by other providers, and you cannot create subdomains for domains hosted in other WebCom accounts.

Domain Deletion

If you cancel or otherwise delete virtual hosting a given domain, the subdomains for that domain will cease to work; you cannot have a subdomain without having that parent domain active in your account. If you would like to delete just a subdomain, please see Delete Subdomain.