WordPress MU

Hello, there!

Installing WP MU was a breeze (although I'd like to mention that it seems that PHP safe mode has to be off for file uploads to work?), and that was great.

My WPMU installation is at hoyque.com, and I'm trying to use domains instead of subdomains for the different blogs. So, I followed DrMike's instructions, and I simply can't get it to work. If I only update the blog's 4 options ( Site Admin --> Blogs --> Edit ) to reflect the new domain, I always get redirected to http://hoyque.com/wp-signup.php?new=domainname goes here]. If I also update wp_sites and wp_blogs as explaines in DrMike's post, i get the error message "No WPMU site defined on this host.". If I use the Multi-Site-Manager plugin, i also get the "No WPMU site.." error, and when i try to move the blog back to the main WPMU domain, the plugin seems to screw up the blogs domain name in very creative ways.
I'm running wordpress-mu-1.2.3-2.2.1 on a Plesk-managed server, and included the blog's new domain name using a ServerAlias in apache's config file.
One cause for my problems MIGHT be that the domain name ( dra-chavarria.com ) is already configured in Plesk (for emails and such). But I told Plesk NOT(!) to manage http://www.dra-chavarria.com (note the 'www.'), and that seems to work fine: without the 'www.' I get the data that is configured in Plesk, and with the 'www.', I at least get the WPMU signup-page/error.

So, what am I doing wrong here?

Did you add the new site to the wp_site table, and use the new site_id?

As I said, if I only update the blog's options using the Admin interface, I get redirected to the "sign up for a new blog!" page, event though, as far as I understand the many other posts here on this topic, this should kind of work already. If I insert the new domain into wp_sites, and use the (autocreated) new id from that operation tu update the blogs site_id in the table wp_blogs, I get the "No WPMU site defined on this host." error message.

okay, i solved this issue - but i must admit that i am a bit mad at the solution.
It seems that WPMU simply strips the 'www.' from a domain in wpmu-settings.php. when i commented that part out, everything seems to work fine. But could SOMEONE please explain to me why WPMU considers 'www.' a special type of subdomain? Does this have any deeper reason, which might lead to more problems later on?
And a little nitpick: why would WPMU do this in a configuration-file, of all places?

You might want to use this:

http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/Multi-Site-Manager

Could help speed a few steps up.

It treats it as a subdomain, because it is a subdomain.

When it's trying to figure out what to do based off that subdomain, having it set when it isn't needed (IE: the main site), ends up causing problems later on, and adding more code to handle it adds more bloat and extra processing that isn't needed when it's easier to just strip it out from the get go.