WordPress MU

Hi all,

I have read what feels like hundreds of posts about installation of MU on shared hosting.

What I am still not clear about, is whether it is possible to run MU on shared hosting with absolutely no changes to httpd.conf, with changes only made to .htaccess.

DNS wildcards are no problem as I can do them myself.

Is this possible and if so, can someone provide the details of the changes required to .htaccess.

Perhaps not a definitive answer, but my first foray into wpmu was on a shared hosting environment. It required the changes to the httpd.conf file, in addition to the DNS wildcard and having Symlinks on.

Fortunately for me, the host had no problems adding the necessary data to the .conf file.

Though I am very happy with my hosting company, they do not allow mods to htppd.conf on shared servers, so that is why I am after an answer and a direction to move in.

If it is the case that mods definitely need to be made to httpd.conf then I can at least go back to the hosts and inform them. We can then see where to go from there.

I am just hoping that someone out there can shed some light and show the way.

Like you, host would not enable wildcard DNS. Make certain during install that wp-config has vhosts=no. That's about it. blogs/joe or joe.blogs. Wasn't a big deal to me.

Bandwidth/file storage are never close to trouble and are easiest to manage. CPU and memory can be a huge concern, though. The host doesn't provide a way for me to monitor my cpu and memory use. Hrumph.

Shared hosts can put the hose on your install without notice if you violate your "share" of the server's load. Your share of memory or cpu is left up to their discretion. They can put the "chmod000" on any file at any time to keep your share down.

Any company that's proposing a blog platform like WordPress among its 1-click installs (eg via Fantastico) will likely have mod_rewrite and Follow Symlinks on, but do ask them before signing up, if anything as a test of their support quality. DNS wildcarding doesn't seem to be as pervasive a feature but it's by no means rare, and you can ask for that too or go the non-subdomain install route as dsader pointed out.

I'm on the MediaTemple grid server, their newish shared-hosting offering. There are other posts here about hosting companies (click the 'hosting' tag above). A quick tip on that - know what your needs are before deciding. If you just want to be able to run a WPMU-based site, that will narrow the field tremendously.

Thanks for the replies.

The question still remains though. Can I run WPMU on shared hosting without modifying httpd.conf?

(I would really prefer to use sub-domains and not sub-directories)

Nope? You need a wildcard serverAlias in a virtualHost directive within httpd.conf if you want subdomains.

httpd.conf must be modified to support sub-domains.

It really isn't a huge deal, as the edit only affects your site. If your host won't do it, it may be that this is their way of saying they would prefer it not be installed, but without actually having to tell you directly.

It isn't like it's a global config, it's only for the virtual host that's for your site.

It will install fine without the edit, but you'll have to use sub-dir's.

Thanks for the replies zeug/lunayte.

Now I know this for sure, I can go back to the host and see what can/can't be done.