Switch your website from its temporary cpanel.site address to your real domain

If you've built a website on a temporary address ending in .cpanel.site (for example friendly-blue-otter.123-45-67-89.cpanel.site), you can swap it over to your real domain name in cPanel once the site is ready to go live. It takes a couple of minutes, and your website files move across with it.

What is a temporary domain?

A temporary domain is a placeholder address cPanel gives a website before its real domain name is ready. It's handy for building and testing a site without touching your live domain. While a website is on a temporary domain, cPanel switches off a few features for it:

• email accounts for that domain
• editing its DNS records
• search engine optimisation tools

These all become available once you replace the temporary domain with your registered domain.

Before you start

1. Point your domain at your hosting. If your domain uses our nameservers, there's nothing to do. If your DNS is managed somewhere else (for example Cloudflare or another registrar), update the domain's A record to your hosting's IP address. See Which nameservers do I use? and Where is my DNS managed?
2. Take a backup. Open your service and click Backup under Quick Shortcuts. See Download a full backup of your hosting account.
3. Remove the domain from anywhere else in cPanel. If you've already added the real domain to the same cPanel account (as an addon domain or alias), remove it first, or the replacement will fail because the name is already in use.

Replace the temporary domain with your real domain

1. Go to Services → My Services (https://www.hooplahosting.co.nz/client/clientarea.php?action=services) and open the hosting service the website is on.
2. Click Log in to cPanel in the menu on the left.
3. Open Domains (search for "Domains" at the top of cPanel if you can't see it).
4. Find the temporary .cpanel.site domain in the list and click Manage next to it.
5. Under Update the domain, choose Replace with a registered domain.
6. Type your real domain name (for example example.co.nz) and click Update.

cPanel moves the website's files to the new domain's folder and leaves a link behind at the old location, so nothing goes missing. Email and DNS editing are switched on for the domain straight away.

Is the temporary domain your account's main domain? If the temporary domain is the main domain of the cPanel account, the Replace with a registered domain option won't appear. Open a ticket from Support → Open Ticket (https://www.hooplahosting.co.nz/client/submitticket.php) with the temporary address and your real domain, and we'll change it for you.

WordPress sites: update the site address

WordPress saves its own address in its database, so a site built on the temporary domain may still send visitors back to the .cpanel.site address after the switch. Check the site on your real domain. If it redirects back, or images and links still point to the old address:

1. Log in to WordPress at the temporary address (for example https://friendly-blue-otter.123-45-67-89.cpanel.site/wp-admin) before you switch, or at https://your-domain/wp-admin afterwards.
2. Go to Settings → General.
3. Change both WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to your real domain, starting with https://, and click Save Changes. You'll be logged out, so log back in on the new address.
4. Links and images inside your pages may still use the old address. A search-and-replace plugin such as Better Search Replace can update them in one go. Take a backup first, and if your developer looks after the site, ask them to do this step.
5. Clear any caching plugin (for example LiteSpeed Cache) so visitors see the updated pages. See Website changes not showing?

Get the free SSL certificate

AutoSSL issues a free certificate for your real domain automatically once the domain points at our servers. This usually happens within a few hours of the DNS change. If the site still shows a "not secure" warning after a day, see AutoSSL: install or fix your free SSL.

Other cpanel.site addresses

You may occasionally notice other .cpanel.site addresses linked to your account. cPanel creates these behind the scenes, for example when WordPress Management (WP Toolkit) runs Smart Updates. They can't be removed and you can safely leave them alone. They don't affect your live website.

Need a hand?

If the replacement fails or your site doesn't load on the new domain, open a ticket from Support → Open Ticket (https://www.hooplahosting.co.nz/client/submitticket.php). Include the temporary address, your real domain and any error message you saw.