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I'm currently running an ftp server (vsftpd) on my site say www.domain.com. I'd like to change this so users can type in ftp.domain.com instead of www.domain.com to get to my ftp.

I'm confused with the process here. I'm using Godaddy for my domains. I assume I have to create a subdomain. Although it sounds like I may need to just forward my domain to this subdomain. But wouldn't that generate duplicate content in Google's eyes?

What is the process I need to do to set this up? Thanks in advance.

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  • Assuming you manage your hosting from cPanel, what you can do is create subdomain "ftp" and use it as prefix to domain.com so users can type ftp.domain.com You can also shorten URLs if you find them to be longer than desired. Is content on your domain.com already indexed in Google? If you redirect 301 to subdomain, then Google will probably eventually remove domain.com from its index and add the destination but I don't see why you need to go this route. Just create subdomain.
    – Boris_yo
    Mar 16, 2013 at 13:12
  • @Boris_yo My site is already indexed. I'm just worried about creating subdomain ftp when it will just point to www.domain.com. Won't Google think I have 2 duplicate sites at ftp.domain.com and www.domain.com?
    – Tom
    Mar 16, 2013 at 17:50
  • Is content on ftp.domain.com same as on domain.com?
    – Boris_yo
    Mar 16, 2013 at 18:38
  • I think I'm getting confused with terminology. I have a site www.domain.com. Full of content and fully indexed by Google. I now want to run an ftp site on the same server. It is already setup and working great. If someone ftp's to www.domain.com it works great. Now I just want to change it so that users type in ftp.domain.com. So I guess the content is not the same as it is just an ftp server running on port 21. So I think your original advice stands...just create a subdomain?
    – Tom
    Mar 17, 2013 at 2:51
  • You can't run website on FTP because it is not HTTP. All your browser will see is a list of files and directories. If you want to host FTP server (not website) on ftp.domain.com then content on your HTTP which is www.domain.com will be completely different to that of on FTP.
    – Boris_yo
    Mar 17, 2013 at 14:01

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Create a Host A record in DNS manager with name ftp to your IP of FTP server. OR

Assign a CNAME to www.domain.com with name ftp

I hope this video might be helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqABLv7XK34

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  • Don't you mean add a CNAME to domain.com for ftp? You should also have a CNAME to domain.com for www, which then points to the A record of @, your base domain name.
    – Ethan Allen
    Aug 20, 2016 at 18:49
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You will need to change your domain dns settings to point ftp.domain.com to your server's IP address. If you have Apache running, you could use virtual hosts to make sure that ftp.domain.com does not point to your website.

<VirtualHost *:80>
   DocumentRoot /var/www/
   ServerName domain.com
   ServerAlias www.domain.com
</VirtualHost>

If you configure nothing else, only your website would be accessible under domain.com or www.domain.com. Your FTP site would be accessible under domain.com, www.domain.com and ftp.domain.com unless you did something similar.

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  • Would this be necessary if I just got a subdomain?
    – Tom
    Mar 17, 2013 at 2:56

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