Here's How to Create a Subdomain in cPanel (and Where the Files Go)

As soon as a subdomain name is typed, cPanel suggests a document root folder, almost always public_html/subdomainname by default. That folder is where the subdomain's files need to live — anything uploaded there is what visitors to blog.yoursite.com will actually see, completely separate from whatever sits in public_html itself for the main domain.

The suggested path can be overridden before creating the subdomain, which is useful if the intent is to point the subdomain at an existing folder that already has files in it, rather than generating a fresh empty one. Once created, that document root can still be changed later by editing the subdomain's settings, though moving files afterward is the safer order of operations.

A subfolder (yoursite.com/blog) is simpler when the content is meant to feel like one continuous site sharing the same theme, navigation, and SEO authority as the root domain — search engines generally treat a subfolder as part of the same site far more readily than a subdomain. A subdomain is the better call when the two are genuinely separate: a different CMS, a staging copy that must never be indexed, or an app with its own login system.

It's also worth deciding this before building anything substantial, since moving content from a subdomain into a subfolder later (or the reverse) means dealing with redirects and re-establishing whatever search visibility that section had built up under the old address.