As seems to be the case these days most hosts are offering one free domain for your use. Obviously, if you are transferring from another host you already have a domain name registered and you will eventually be changing the nameservers at your domain registrar to point to your new domain. Don't do it now, that is the last step.

In regards to the 'free domain name' accept the offer and use that domain name purely for administrative purposes. I recommend not using the free domain name for public purposes. It's not a good idea for your host to also be your domain registrar (they will be for the free domain name), it only leads to problems down the track should there be any issues with your host. Effectively, your host could hold you to ransom as they hold the key, the domain name registration.

Another little issue with free domain names or think of them as the main account name is that the document root is the public_html folder and that can't be changed. Well it can't for my host, Drupal Value Hosting. What this means is that if you are wanting a clean site, eg. http://mysite.com, (not referring to a sub-folder) then when uploading and extracting the Drupal (or any system) files, by default the top level folder will be something similar to drupal6-2. You would have to rename this top level folder to public_html or move all the folders and files under the drupal-6-2 folder to the public_html folder. Either way, all files are now at the top level folder of your system. Why is this an issue? If you are considering running a few other sites then all of a sudden it becomes very messy at the top level public_html folder as the new sites will need to have their folders mixed in with the Drupal setup. As I said, very messy.

The following assumes that you are not using your one and only so-called free domain name.

You now need to prepare your site for your existing domain name(s). Access your new host cpanel pages and navigate to the Domain section.

Click on the Addon Domains link and the following screen should appear.

It is from this screen where you enter your existing domain name(s). Assuming your existing domain name is oldsite.com, that name is entered in the 'new domain name' field. You will note as soon as you've entered that, the document root will automatically be public_html/oldsite.com.

If you only have one Drupal site then this would be suitable though I recommend against it. Looking to the future, it's far easier to have a specific Drupal folder (under public_html) and all your document roots of all your sites pointing to the one folder. This will be clearer when a 'multi-site' Drupal setup is discussed.

Change the document root to where Drupal is installed (or will be installed). If the folder isn't yet created, it will be. Note, it must be a sub-folder of public_html. Click the Add Domain button and your entries should be saved. The following screen should appear.

For an example I also created addon domains for oldsite1.com, oldsite2.com. Returning to the main Addon Domain page will now appear like so.

You will note that all the newly created addon domain names all point to the same document root directory. This is required for a multi-site Drupal setup.

You should also note that at this point your existing domain names are still pointing to your old host, that will be the last issue to be addressed. We are merely preparing ourselves at the moment.