cPanel/WHM is a web-based control panel to manage a complete Linux operating system. All the cPanel accounts are created using one primary domain. This article will help you to change the document root for the primary domain of the cPanel user.
You must have root shell access for changing the main/primary domain document root in cPanel, Use the following steps to change the document root of your primary domain in the cPanel account.
Prerequisites
You must have SSH access to root user to 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.