Knowledgebase

cPanel/WHM is a web-based control panel to manage complete Linux operating system. All the cPanel accounts are created using one primary domain. This article will help you to change documentroot for the primary domain of cPanel user.

You must have root shell access for changing the main/primary domain document root in cPanel, Use following steps to change document root of your primary domain in cPanel account.

Prerequisites

You must have SSH access to root user to the cPanel server.

Step 1 – Update Document Root in cPanel

Use SSH to get shell access for your server as root account, using your favorite ssh client. I have connected our server using PuTTY. Now edit following file.

vim /var/cpanel/userdata/USERNAME/DOMAINNAME.COM

Change USERNAME with your cPanel account name.
Change DOMAINNAME.COM with your Primary domain name.

After editing file, search for text documentroot and change path as per your requirements.

documentroot: /home/USERNAME/public_html/NEW_PATH

Step 2 – Changes Document Root for SSL
If your site is configured to run with ssl, then you also need to edit following file along with the step 1.

Edit file in text editor

vim /var/cpanel/userdata/USERNAME/DOMAINNAME.COM_SSL

and apply the same changes as above.

documentroot: /home/USERNAME/public_html/NEW_PATH

Step 3 – Rebuild and Restart Apache
After making changed, we need to rebuild Apache configuration file and restart Apache server. Use following command to do it.

/scripts/rebuildhttpdconf
service httpd restart

Your changes will be permanently updated. Check your site for reflecting changes.