Multiple domains in an account?

[earth-friendly]

Hi. I am a newbie--just started an account with Dathorn.
I own several domains. I'm not currently a reseller--all the domains are for different sites of mine.
I thought it would make sense to create a single package and account, and associate all my domains with this one account. That way, I could login through ssh, and access the files for all my different accounts. If I wanted to share copies of files between the different domains, I could easily copy the files to different directories, rather than having to ftp the files across different accounts.

When I asked about this in a support ticket, Andrew's response was:
"It is generally easiest and less problematic to have a separate account for each domain. cPanel is not perfect, if you addon a bunch of domains to one account the likelihood of there being problems increases."

My question is, has anyone had any direct experience with this issue? Do you have accounts with more than one domain, and has it caused you problems?
It seems like I would have certain advantages if I set things up this way (assuming I understand things correctly--would I be able to access all my domains' files from one ssh account??)
But if there would be serious problems, I don't want to do it this way.

Would this work for a small number of domains--say 3, but not work well for a larger number of domains, like 10?

And, another question is, if I set it up with several domain names in one account, and it causes problems, can I later change things so that the domains are split up into different accounts?

Thanks very much for any guidance with this!
I look forward to a great experience with Dathorn, after reading all these forums and seeing all the wonderful things everyone has said! So far, my experience with the support has been fantastic!
Andrew has responded to my questions really quickly! Thanks Andrew!

[Buddha]

My question is, has anyone had any direct experience with this issue?

I certianly don't have the experience of Andrew, who manages servers with over 8000 domains. Me, I've never had more than two domains on an account at once. Sort of breaks my one egg per basket rule to host multiple domains in one account. The cause of this behavior is I just don't like being woke up by my phone ringing off the hook.

Probably the biggest problem with cpanel is upgrades. I've had accounts with just one domain stop working after an upgrade. I wouldn't want that to happen to all my domains at once.

[AndrewT]

Based on my experience, I was just offering my advice. You could put them all on one account and end up not having any problems. There's no way to guarantee one way or another. But there have been many times when users that have had many domains setup on one cPanel account where they stopped working in some manner. Not only this, but it is much easier for us to fix problems on account with only a few domains as compared to 10+.

It is not an easy task to seperate them into multiple accounts after the fact. If you want to do it that way it needs to be done initially. Otherwise you would have re-setup all e-mails accounts, all cPanel settings, etc.

[earth-friendly]

Parked domains?

It sounds like from the feedback so far, it would be safer to limit it to one domain per account, just in case that causes problems. (Anyone else, please speak up if you have additional experience. I want to set this up very soon, and I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks!).

A related question:
I am about to register 4 domain names, which are all similar, and will ultimately resolve to the same website. What's the best way to implement this?
Do I just create an account with 1 of the domain names listed as a domain name, and list the other 3 domain names as "parked domains"?
And, once I purchase the domain names, how do I "park" them here, with this account?
Or, should I just leave the 3 domain names with the registrar (I was thinking of using 1&1 because they are cheap. Any problems with them?), and redirect them to point to the 4th domain name, which will be the domain for the account?
Or, is there a totally different way that I should be doing this?

Thanks very much for any help!!

[AndrewT]

If you want all 4 to point to the exact same account/content you will need to create an account for one of them via WHM then park the other 3 via cPanel for the domain. Then all you need is to give each domain the proper nameservers at the domain registrar.

[Pedja]

It is better to have separate cpanel accounts for each site, but there are reawons to have them more on one account as Add-on domains. I use both approaches, depending on sites.

It is definitely much easier to maintain sites if they are all accessible under one ftp/ssh account.

I use these rules:

- if site is small and does not require much maintenance then I seet it up as addon to account which I created for that purpose.

- if site requires more maintenance, including different email account setings, need for several ftp accounts, subdomains, etc., then I use separate cpanel account for it.

- if someone else but me has to have access to maintain site, then I use separate cpanel account for it, regardless if I provide full access for cpanel account or just FTP sto web space.

If, for some reason you decide to move site from add-on space to spearate cpanel account you have to remove add-on domain from shared cpanel account, create spearate account with the domain assigned and then set everything from zero.

[inztinkt]

i have several sites all using different cpanels accounts.

for more info on how to move files amongst them check my thread about Moving large ammounts of data.(thanks to the users of this forum, once again )