SiteGround is one of the popular web hosting companies primarily focusing on WordPress customers. They are also one of the recommended hosting services by the official WordPress.org site. They offer SG Optimizer caching plugin to speed up your site and SG Security plugin can protect your site on Google Cloud Platform. You can make use of the latest SiteGround CDN which is recently introduced as a beta feature. If you are new to SiteGround, here is how you can install WordPress on subdirectory in SiteGround hosting.
WordPress Hosting on SiteGround
At this point of time SiteGround offers three pricing plans with 80% discount for manages WordPress hosting.
- StartUp – single site plan with 10K visits per month and costing $2.99 per month
- GrowBig – unlimited sites with 100K visits per month and $4.99 per month
- GoGeek – unlimited sites with 400K visits per month and $7.99 per month
Except StartUp plan, you can add multiple websites and install any applications like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla on other plans.
Why to Use Subdirectory (Folder) for Additional WordPress Installations?
When you purchase a plan, SiteGround will automatically install WordPress on your primary domain. You can find all sites added in your account under “Websites” section after logging into your hosting account. It is possible to delete existing installations and add new sites when you needed. However, many users do not know that you can add additional installations on subdirectories and subdomains. We highly recommend using subdirectory (folder) instead of subdomain due to the following reasons:
- SiteGround keeps all subdomains outside the primary domain with their own root. This will create problems when you want to move the site to other hosting at later time as free migrations offered by hosting companies mainly move files available in root of your site.
- Subdirectory does not need separate SSL certificate; it will use the same from your primary domain. However, you have to get SSL for subdomain separately with Let’s Encrypt or use wildcard option for the domain.
- Subdomains are considered as separate sites by Google and subdirectories are part of the primary site. Hence you can install WordPress on subdirectory to keep your SEO benefits of the primary domain.
Here is an example of the URLs of primary domain and subdirectory installations:
| URL | Type |
|---|---|
| https://your-site.com/ | Primary Domain |
| https://your-site.com/my-site | “my-site” is a subdirectory (folder) |
Installing WordPress in Subdirectory
Follow the below instructions to install additional WordPress setup on your subdirectory:
- Click on “Websites” tab and then click “Site Tools” button showing under the site. Make sure to select the correct site from the list in which you want to install WordPress on its subdirectory.
- This will take you to Site Tools section and navigate to “WordPress” section.
- Click on “Install & Manage” option to view the installation options available for you. SiteGround will show you two options – one with WooCommerce and other without WooCommerce. Click on the setup you want to install.
Filling Up Installation Details
Unlike many other hosting companies, you do not need to fill any complicated details like database name, database username, etc. for creating WordPress setup in SiteGround. You have the following three sections to fill some simple details:
- Application setup – your domain must be already selected in this list, just make sure to confirm the “Domain” section. By default, installation language will be set as “English (United States), you can change this from the dropdown if you want. You will see the main folder is selected as your “Installation Path” by default. Change that and select “Subfolder” as your installation path and type the folder name in which you want to install WordPress. This is an important step as wrongly installing on main will delete all existing content. Similarly, make sure to type the folder that is not existing, otherwise existing content in that folder will be deleted.
- Admin Info – here you can enter your administrator username, password and email address for logging into your WordPress admin panel.
- Add-ons – SiteGround offers two add-ons to install with WordPress. One is to install their starter wizard and other is to change your single site installation to multisite. Uncheck both options to install WordPress with default theme. If you have selected WooCommerce option, then SiteGround will install Storefront theme instead of default WordPress theme.
- Click “Install” button to start the process.
It will less than 30 seconds to install WordPress on the selected subfolder and you will see a success message like below. You can either view the site or login to your admin panel and start building your site.
Cleaning Up your Site
Most hosting companies add their own stuff while installing WordPress. And on the SiteGround, you will see the following stuffs:
- SiteGround Optimizer and SiteGround plugins.
- Default WordPress theme or Storefront theme for WooCommerce.
- A dummy comment and a “Hello world” post.
You delete the dummy comment/post and change theme/plugins if you need. The best option is to put your site under maintenance mode or go to “Settings > Reading” section and disable search engines from indexing your site. When you are ready with your content, you can revert these options and submit your XML Sitemap to Google. This will help to avoid Google indexing junk content from your site which is not supposed to be shown on search results pages.
Deleting WordPress Installation on Subdirectory
When you want to learn WordPress and play around with admin settings, we recommend using localhost setup with apps like Local WP. However, some settings and options will not work on localhost like sending emails. In such cases, the best options is to install WordPress on your subdirectory or subdomain and play around with the admin panel. You can install any theme or plugin like your live site and test the features. However, there will be a situation that after finishing your testing and learning you may not need the installation.
Deleting WordPress installation is a pain task as you need to delete the files and database separately. SiteGround removes all these pain by allowing you to delete the installation with single click. After installing WordPress on subdirectory, you can see the list of installations on the under “Manage Installations” section. Click on the three vertical dots icon showing at the right end of your installation. Select “Delete Application” option to completely delete all files and database easily. It is also possible to move the installed WordPress setup to a new folder by using “Move Application” option.
