Symbolic links, or "symlinks," are essentially shortcuts to specific files or directories. A symlink's ability to traverse file systems due to its reference to abstract filenames and directories rather than actual locations is one of its benefits. 

There is a number of ways to create a symlink in cPanel:

1. You may use the following command to create a symlink using the Terminal in cPanel or over SSH:

 ln -s /path/to/target /path/to/shortcut

2. The same command may be used to generate it via a cronjob as well:

NOTE: Once the symlink has been formed, be careful to remove the cronjob.

3. You can also create a symlink using the PHP function.

The example of the script can be found below:

<?php

$target = '/home/cPanelusername/public_html/index.html';

$shortcut = 'script.html';

symlink($target, $shortcut);

?>

Just run this PHP file in the browser and it will create symlink right away.

Example of the symlink usage

There are several situations where a symlink could be the ideal answer. For the addon domain website (/public_html/domain1.com), we will utilize a symlink in our example to access photos stored in the main domain web root (/public_html/):

The only method to use the photos in the /public_html/images folder is to build a symlink in the addon domain folder because the addon domain website lacks access to /public_html or any higher level directory: 

ln -s /home/ncexample/public_html/images/ /home/ncexample/public_html/domain1.com/images

As you can see, symlinks will help you to avoid duplicate content if you use the same files for multiple websites.