# How To Use CertSage with Multiple Domain Names Hosted within a Single cPanel Account **URL:** \ **Category:** Client dev\ **Created:** [March 5, 2025, 1:26am UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/how-to-use-certsage-with-multiple-domain-names-hosted-within-a-single-cpanel-account/234635 "2025-03-05T01:26:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![griffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/user_avatar/community.letsencrypt.org/griffin/32/50204_2.png) [@griffin](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/griffin)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 1:26am UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/how-to-use-certsage-with-multiple-domain-names-hosted-within-a-single-cpanel-account/234635/1 "2025-03-05T01:26:37Z")
# 1. Getting Started When you host multiple domain names within a single cPanel account, you have a "main domain" name and one or more "addon domain" names. In my example throughout this article, `griffin.software` is my main domain name and `certsage.com` and `cloakanddagger.com` are my addon domain names. You can identify your main domain name and addon domain names by scrolling to the Domains section in your cPanel and clicking on the Domains link in that section as seen in this screenshot: ![1](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/9/7/97c971c03e755f33f1d2e44840c4388cd8978515.png) On the next screen you will see the domain names hosted in your cPanel account. As seen in the first screenshot below, `griffin.software` is clearly my main domain name while `certsage.com` and `cloakanddagger.com` are my addon domain names. You'll also notice in the first screenshot below that there are also two subdomain names of `griffin.software` listed: `certsage.com.griffin.software` and `cloakanddagger.com.griffin.software`. This is because cPanel associates each addon domain name with a subdomain name of the main domain name. Note that these associated subdomain names are arbitrary and do not need to match their associated addon domain names in any way. If you click on the Manage button next to one of the addon domain names (e.g. `certsage.com` in the first screenshot below) then click the "Show Additional Details" link on the resulting page in the DOMAIN INFORMATION section (e.g. the second screenshot below), you can see the associated subdomain name for your addon domain name. You can also see the document root directory for your addon domain name, which you will need to know in later steps of this tutorial. For the main domain name (e.g. `griffin.software` in my case), the document root directory is `/public_html`, but for an addon domain name the document root directory is a directory inside of `/public_html`. ![2](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/f/b/fb3f3e405a6cc84972934cf06711cd6e57b241c2.jpeg) ![3](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/0/d/0d074ba7fe73b212920a4647b06758cd738cc527.png) # 2. Preparing CertSage for Your Addon Domain Names For your main domain name (e.g. `griffin.software` in my case), you should first follow the standard CertSage instructions for installing CertSage then acquire and install a production certificate for your main domain name and any of its subdomain names except for the subdomain names associated with your addon domain names (e.g. `certsage.com.griffin.software` and `cloakanddagger.com.griffin.software` in my case). A subdomain name associated with an addon domain name can be included in the certificate for that addon domain name. Once you have a production certificate installed for your main domain name, you can proceed to preparing CertSage for your addon domain names. To install CertSage for addon domain names, there is a bit of prep you should do to make the process smoother. You want to have a separate CertSage data directory for each of your domain names. For your main domain name, you should already have a CertSage data directory named `CertSage` located in the root directory of your cPanel account. You can see this by opening File Manager in your cPanel. You need to manually create CertSage data directories for your addon domain names, which can be accomplished using File Manager, as illustrated in the screenshot below. Note how the CertSage data directories in my example exist alongside the `public_html` directory in the root directory, NOT inside the `public_html` directory, which would expose their contents to the public internet. In my case I have renamed the `CertSage` directory associated with my main domain name (`griffin.software`) to `CertSage.griffin.software` so that I know explicitly which domain name is associated with that CertSage data directory. ![4](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/c/f/cf2275bdd0072a8f7da3229cff4cfff45f3bf03e.png) Once you have created a CertSage data directory for each of your addon domain names, the next step is to copy your production and staging ACME account keys (`account.key` and `account-staging.key`) from the CertSage data directory of your main domain name to the CertSage data directories of your addon domain names, which can be accomplished using File Manager. In my case I copied those two files from `CertSage.griffin.software` to `CertSage.certsage.com` and `CertSage.cloakanddagger.com` per the screenshot below. If you wish to use the same CertSage password for your addon domain names that you use for your main domain name, you can copy `password.txt` from the CertSage data directory of your main domain name to the CertSage data directories of your addon domain names. ![5](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/1/f/1fd077f7dd8b82749ed49d8e6a6e421ae3c63d45.png) # 3. Installing CertSage for Your Addon Domain Names Once you have CertSage data directories prepared for all of your domain names, you need to install a `certsage.php` file into the document root directory of each of your domain names then modify one line of each `certsage.php` file to point that `certsage.php` to the appropriate CertSage data directory. You should already have a `certsage.php` file installed into `/public_html`, which is the document root directory for your main domain name. To install a `certsage.php` file for each of your addon domain names, you can simply copy the `certsage.php` file from `/public_html` to the document root directory of each of your addon domain names, which are located inside of `/public_html`. As an example in the screenshot below, in File Manager I can select the `certsage.php` file located inside the `/public_html` directory then copy it into the `certsage.com` and `cloakanddagger.com` directories located inside the `/public_html` directory. ![6](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/0/0/007557de1d7d5f1ef41e3f3f252182a1d654d259.png) You next need to modify each `certsage.php` file to point it to the appropriate CertSage data directory, which can be accomplished using File Manager. To do so, simply select the `certsage.php` file you wish to modify then click the Edit button in the ribbon above. This will open a new screen with a file editor displaying the contents of that `certsage.php` file. On the line with `$dataDirectory` (about line 18), modify the directory path inside the double quotes so that it points to the appropriate CertSage data directory then click the Save Changes button then click the Close button, both located in the upper right. For your main domain name, the directory path will begin with `../` where `..` means that the directory you specify after the `/` is located in the parent directory of where `certsage.php` is located, meaning that it is located alongside `public_html`, NOT inside of `public_html`. For an example, see the first two screenshots below. For an addon domain name, the directory path will begin with `../../` where `../..`means that the directory you specify after the second `/` is located in the parent directory of the parent directory of where `certsage.php` is located, meaning that it is located alongside `public_html`, NOT inside of `public_html`. For two examples, see the last four screenshots below. The distinction between the directory paths for your main domain name and addon domain names is absolutely critical. Setting a directory path incorrectly will cause CertSage to look in the wrong place for the data it needs. ![7](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/5/4/5458a08ab69161d41e2c3eeb9a6595857ac3da85.png) ![8](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/e/7/e75386623944cb1a8d93277bdca94ebbfc92d021.png) ![9](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/9/f/9f5d0f3820dea899bc83fcd088e93f3e270ce5d7.png) ![10](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/3/b/3b748c7fe16321886eb434212686695dcd349de0.png) ![11](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/d/0/d0ad33217e960954ac1ff0c49fee704c7c75d39a.png) ![12](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/f/a/faae131e19e475d0578c74638766cb781e1795bf.png) # 4. Acquiring and Installing Production Certificates for Your Addon Domain Names At this point, you can operate CertSage for your addon domain names in the same way you would for your main domain name. If you wish to be very thorough about covering the most subdomain names for each domain name, you can add an `A` record for each desired subdomain name to the DNS zone for the corresponding domain name. These records will point to the same IP address as the domain name, making them "aliases" of each other. Adding these `A` records is optional and beyond the scope of explanation of this tutorial. If there is enough demand, I will write a separate tutorial explaining in detail for GoDaddy. ---
**Author:** ![EnglishPatient](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e9a140/32.png) [@EnglishPatient](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/EnglishPatient)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 11:13am UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/how-to-use-certsage-with-multiple-domain-names-hosted-within-a-single-cpanel-account/234635/2 "2025-03-05T11:13:01Z")
Hello It all worked perfectly! Excellent tutorial, and very easy to follow. Thankyou very much for putting this together. Much appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![griffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/user_avatar/community.letsencrypt.org/griffin/32/50204_2.png) [@griffin](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/griffin)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 11:50am UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/how-to-use-certsage-with-multiple-domain-names-hosted-within-a-single-cpanel-account/234635/3 "2025-03-05T11:50:40Z")
Glad to hear and thank you so much for the feedback! 😀 ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/original/3X/c/a/ca6c06ea1ea201324bba7048c6841ce60236468d.png) [@system](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/system)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 11:50am UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/how-to-use-certsage-with-multiple-domain-names-hosted-within-a-single-cpanel-account/234635/4 "2025-04-04T11:50:51Z")
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