How to solve cPanel’s “Domain already exists, it was not added” problem – WordPress and Web App Developer in Kota Kinabalu Sabah Malaysia Borneo

I encountered this error about 6 months ago, when trying to add a domain to my unlimited domains hosting account:

Error from domain wrapper: Domain already exists, it was not added.: <some.domain.com>

You get this error sometimes, when you are hosted using the wonderful cPanel. What happened to me was:

I parked LornaTimbah.com which redirects automatically to WebGrrrl.net.
Once I was ready to let LornaTimbah.com have its proper site, I deleted the domain from Parked Domains panel, and added it back via the Addon Domains panel.
I get the Domain Already Exists error, even though it was not listed in the Addon Domains, nor was it listed in the Parked Domains panel confirming that it indeed has been deleted.

You can also get this error if you have just deleted a domain from the Addon Domains instead of Parked Domains, and then tried to add it back in again.

I googled for a solution at that time, but none was provided. So, I had to contact WPWebHost’s support superguy Foress and asked to fix it, which he amazingly did in just minutes even though the request was made via e-mail.

Only today, while installing some blogs for others, did I realize that this is actually a pretty easy problem to solve.

In cPanel, go to your Subdomains panel.
Find one that looks like the domain you’ve just deleted; in my case, it was lornatimbah.webgrrrl.net.
Delete that subdomain.
Now go back and add that domain in your Addon Domains or Parked Domains list.

And yeah, that should work.

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Posted on 5 January, 2009 under Life online and tagged with cpanel, domain name

11 comments

Vee says:

31 August, 2009 at 2:28 am

Thanks a lot! That helped me out. 🙂

Lorna says:

3 September, 2009 at 11:09 am

I’m glad it did, Vee.

tay says:

21 November, 2009 at 10:45 am

found this while searching google to your error report “Error from domain wrapper: Domain already exists”

I’m a little confused is this a solution to the original problem or how to prevent the problem?

e.g. I hosted an orginal cpanel account : webpage.com
with a parked domain of differentwebpage.org
that had a subdomain of user.differentwebpage.org

I have pieced together a new cpanel account sucessfully differentwebpage.org but now I am failing to create the subdomain user.differentwebpage.org

Lorna says:

18 September, 2015 at 12:41 pm

Yes, this solution should address your issue.

Prevent? It’s a bug in cPanel where only cPanel can solve. Since this is an old post, I believe the subsequent cPanel versions should have addressed this.

Philip Matthews says:

31 March, 2010 at 8:32 am

Thanks SO MUCH! This worked and I felt dumb! I had deleted a domain and then tried to re-add it. It wouldn’t let me and I couldn’t delete it from the ftp either.

Thanks again!

Artful Dodger says:

14 July, 2010 at 12:34 am

Man I was struggling with this problem for over half an hour, thank you so much!

Articles Column says:

19 October, 2010 at 9:42 pm

lol….this was so easy and I thought I messed up something.I tried deleting folder from the files manager but nothing happened.This one worked.Thanks again!