Domains How to Park domain on top of another (domain aliases) ?

DNS Domain Parking

First step is at DNS level, ensure you domains point to same server IP address for both live domain and domain to be parked. You may need up to 24-48hrs to see domain propagation and can use online too at whatsmydns.net to check your domains DNS A records.

Nginx Domain Parking/Alias

Then, you basically edit the domain's nginx vhost /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/domain.com.conf file and/or /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/domain.com.ssl.conf if it exists and edit the server_name listing so if abc.com was real live site and xyz.com is the domain your want to park on top of abc.com as domain alias, it would be

Code (Text):

server {
server_name abc.com xyz.com;

If you need www too it would be

Code (Text):

server {
server_name abc.com www.abc.com xyz.com www.xyz.com;

Then to ensure your SEO isn't messed up setup canonical link headers in nginx vhost file too as outlined here. You need to set it up in 2 places.

In nginx vhost file itself i.e. /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/abc.com.conf or /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/domain.com.conf and if applicable /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/abc.com.ssl.conf or /usr/local/nginx/conf/conf.d/domain.com.ssl.conf

Code (Text):

add_header Link "<http://abc.com$request_uri>; rel=\"canonical\"";

and in /usr/local/nginx/conf/staticfiles.conf include file which is included in each nginx vhost file. Add header canonical link to the html location context

Code (Text):

    location ~* \.(html|htm|txt)$ {
  add_header Link "<http://abc.com$request_uri>; rel=\"canonical\"";
  #add_header Pragma public;
  #add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
  #add_header X-Xss-Protection "1; mode=block" always;
  #add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always;
    add_header Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate";
    access_log off;
    expires 1d;
    break;
        }

This is so that html based files also serve the correct canonical link header to tell search engines which is the real domain so that search engines do not see it as duplicate content.

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Then restart Nginx and PHP-FPM at same time using Centmin Mod command shortcuts outlined in FAQ item 15

Code (Text):

nprestart

To confirm just run curl command in SSH against your domain i.e. curl headers and grep filter for word canonical

Code (Text):

curl -sI https://abc.com | grep canonical

output would be something like

Code (Text):

curl -sI https://abc.com | grep canonical
Link: <http://abc.com/>; rel="canonical"