Change document root in cPanel with root access

Steps to change the Document Root (with server root access)

In order to edit the following files, you may need root access or sudo user access to server.

ssh root@your-server.com
Edit the following file:

/var/cpanel/userdata/USER/DOMAIN

Important! If you have an SSL certificate on the account, you may need to edit the following file as well.

/var/cpanel/userdata/USER/DOMAIN_SSL

You should see the file like the following. The areas to edit are in RED.

–
customlog:
–
format: combined
target: /usr/local/apache/domlogs/domain.com
–
format: “\”%{%s}t %I .\\n%{%s}t %O .\””
target: /usr/local/apache/domlogs/domain.com-bytes_log
documentroot: /home/USER/public_html
group: USER
hascgi: 1
homedir: /home/USER
ip: 123.45.67.89
owner: root
phpopenbasedirprotect: 1
port: 80
scriptalias:
–
path: /home/USER/public_html/cgi-bin
url: /cgi-bin/
serveradmin: webmaster@domain.com
serveralias: www.domain.com
servername: domain.com
usecanonicalname: ‘Off’
user: USER

Change the following lines in the file:

documentroot: /home/USER/public_html
path: /home/USER/public_html/cgi-bin

The changes will look like the following:

documentroot: /home/USER/public_html/new_doc_root_dir
       path: /home/USER/public_html/new_doc_root_dir/cgi-bin

When finished editing the document root, run the following scripts while logged in as the ROOT user.:

/scripts/rebuildhttpsdconf
       service httpsd restart