WordPress MU

Andrea - very true and excellent comment about the subdomains being a part of the content pot but full domains obviously not, just like subdomains.

But here's the idea - if you have domains that have separate value by themselves, you use them as domains and link your sites in the menu. Subdomains are only useful for nice looking organization if you don't use/need SEO. So let's say you own sportsite.com and baseball.com. Your main site might be sportsite.com and you'd prefer to have a setup as baseball.com and sportsite.com linked in the menu than baseball.sportsite.com with the baseball.com redirecting to the subdomain. The latter option is pitiful if you have such a nice domain to use. But if you've got a small section for your company, it might be intranet.sportsite.com and another area called advertising.sportsite.com which isn't expected to get many, if any page views, except off the main site itself. That works.

My site has the same principles. I have a great main domain and several excellent "brand domains" that can run simultaneously and be linked through the header. Sure it would be ideal to put them all under one roof but sportsite.com/baseball/ as a URL is truly mediocre and undermines the value of those great domains. Now for the life of me I'd love to get multisite manager running.

[Anyone interested in lending a hand or for hire for what should take all of a few minutes, I'm all ears. I don't know complete protocol here but can be reached at slinky which is at news guy d com (you can figure it out but spiders won't, lol.)]

I'd still use the mix of subdomains & mapped domains. Why? Because my actual experience in using MU for this long shows that Google loves it to pieces.

Hi as a new user of wordpress, I read through all this thread and it has left me totally confused to say the least.

My requirement is this:
I have a.com, b.com, c.com, all set to point to same hosting space. I installed WPMU here. I need a.com to point to separate blog contents, with corresponding theme,plugins, etc. Same goes for all the other domains. Which one should I use:
Multi site manager from here
http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/Multi-Site-Manager
OR Donncha's Domain mapping plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/

I see Donncha's plugin says compatible up to 2.6, I am using the latest 2.7 WP MU. Can someone pls guide me which one should I go for?

P.S. - I will not be needing any subdomains. just plain TLD's pointing to different blogs all managed by single WPMU allowing to post content while deciding which blog the content has to go to.

I answered in the other thread, but in case anyone else finds this: you HAVE to pick subdomains to start with in most cases.

THEN you sue a plugin to use multiple domains.

Domain mapping is if you just want a separate domain for each site, so it acts like its own blog.

Multi-SITE is if you want each blog to have its own domains AND you want them to act like their own whole MU install, meaning you can create blogs on thsoe domains too.

[Never mind. Figured it out.]

HI thanks,

I am trying to download the multisite plugin from here
http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/Multi-Site-Manager

There seems to be some configuration error in that site, it tries to download a php file with an obscure name when I click on Download, I thought it is the IE8 I am using that is causing this problem, but apparently Firefox also does the same thing. Any enlightenment?

It downloads a php file for me.

Yes, it contains no instructions, just a php file with a long name, but I searched for it and found it should be put in mu-plugins directory.

Just wondering, but why no one is using htaccess to map the domains?

When defining a site in MU, don't give the "http://www.domain.com" just "/", this allows multiple domains to map to the same blog since there is no hardcoded Url mapping. I've used this technique in regular WordPress, I see no reason why won't work in MU. I will try it though to make sure.
This would also allow you to change the domain at a later date. Otherwise, you will have to jump through hoops to change domains due to some plugins saving the full URL in their settings.

Use mod_rewrite to map domain names to blogs. One line per domain. Now each incoming requests for a domain will map internally to their corresponding blogs. One thing to account for here is that permalinks writes to htaccess, so may want to test and see how to make both concepts work.

I'm going to install the new MU and test these techniques.

By the way, you should be able to use Donncha's plugin with step one above also valid.

You would use the method specified above, if you want multiple domains mapping to the same blog, in my case I want multiple domains to map to multiple blogs, all using the same MU installation. Each blog will have different theme. I am using the Multi site manager plugin, and it works fine, only thing is that I am not sure where should I put all the themes into, since it says 'enable or disable site wide themes' in one place and even if you enable the themes when logged into one site, the enabled themes do not appear to be chosen from the other sites. My login info is the same for all the sites.. May be Im doing something wrong, but I cant figure out what is wrong.

Thank you all for your contributions here, it's helped me understand the workings of MU and the MSM/DM plugins much better. I'm new to MU and preparing for my first installation, so everything I can know helps :)

Question for fzeidan, did you ever complete your testing with MU? I'm very interested in your proposed "/" instead of full domain name workaround. The reason is plugin portability - if I have to move a site off of MU to its own hosting (say I developed one for a client and they wanted to take ownership of it), I'd absolutely want to have the plugins move over with all settings instead of having to manually reinstall and recreate said settings because the plugins put FQDNs in their tables.

Also, doesn't WPMU already use mod_rewrite to map domain names to blogs? So your second suggestion would be default behavior?

If anyone else has any comments on these, please feel free to chip in!

From my knowledge, the mod_rewrite test failed. Domain rewriting rules in .htaccess will not translate *into* the WPMu environment such that they can be attached to an individual blog. .htaccess rewrites happen before WPMu gets the request. Once WPMu gets the request, it does rewriting to its various blogs internally through its own tables. .htaccess mod_rewrite and WPMu tables know nothing of each other. If it were possible (.htaccess rewrites to point domains to blogs), this all would be a piece of cake.

I have a WPMU install with sub-domains. Each sub-domain will be a top-level blog - let's say each one for a city - and I want to add other content relevant to each city in sub-folders.

For example, city1.home.com is the blog, but then I have various content areas at city1.home.com/content1, city1.home.com/content2.

I have not had luck trying to add a new blog to one of these sub-folders through WMPMU. I created images.home.com as a new blog and then edited the details to change the blog install to city1.home.com/images - but no luck.

I want my urls to remain relevant and consistent across the external structure and internal management. Will WordPress MU Domain Mapping help here in adding sub-folder blog installs within sub-domain blogs in WPMU or is there another solution? Thanks

I am Site Admin for 3 WP MU sites ( SiteA.com, SiteB.com, SiteC.com) and I have just added a new blog with my Site Admin on all sites. None of these use Subdomains.

I have had hours with no result (i am a newbie) trying to add a new blog with its own domain, pretty simple stuff. I have added the blog no problem, except it will not open in the dashboard.

After reading this it made me think it is a problem with the Standard Domain Mapping feature. I have not added the Donncha or Multi Site Manager, as far as I know its the standard Domain Tool Mapping function under Tools.

This is what happens, can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong or is it a bug with the Standard Domain Mapping Tool.
1/ I set-up a new blog SiteC.com but it only allows allow me to edit it in the Dashboard if it is set up as a subdomain like this http://SiteC.com.SiteA.com/wp-admin/.

After I use Domain Name Tool Mapping and than go to http://SiteC.SiteA.com/wp-admin/wpmu-blogs.php?action=editblog&id=1 and change the URL to http://www.SiteC.com, and than I am NOT ALLOWED TO edit the site and it wont open in the DASHBOARD.

From the dashboard if i click on SiteA.com or SiteB.com the Dashboard will open.

However if i click on site SiteC.com it eitehr opens as the SiteA Dashboard even though the link is http://SiteC.com/wp-admin/ . If I click on edit pages, despite the URL being http://SiteC.com/wp-admin/edit-pages.php it actually opens the SiteC.com. Other times it just goes to the SiteC.com/wp-login.php page, and rejects my password each time.

If I request the password to be reset, the email is sent out for SiteA.com instead of SiteC.com and the click to reset the password also goes to SiteA.com/wp-login.php

.................................................................................................................................................................................................

Even though my Login/Admin details are the same across all 3 sites, it rejects my password every time if i try to login direct at SiteC.com/wp-login.php

The Steps I follow each time I add a blog are as follows:

> Below Site Admin on Left hand Menu i click on Blogs http://SiteC.com/wp-admin/wpmu-blogs.php
>blog address I type the new blog name eg/ SiteC.com, and below it has .SiteA.com so it is set-up as a subdomain of that
> Blog Title- i put name of new blog, ie/ SiteC.com
>Admin Email- i use the same email as as SiteA.com and SiteB.com

it emails me the Username for SiteA not SiteC and the password is N/A. Why no password?

OK, I hope that is clear, as its alte here and I already have done my head in on this.

#### NB: We are looking for a freelancer that can provide ongoing help us with some tweeks and other issues as we encounter them and document the procedure it so we can put into a mindmap and learn from it so we can record our processes a bit better.

@danstuart that's a complicated setup, so you'll need something like this:
http://wpmututorials.com/simple-multi-site-plugin-e-book/

"After reading this it made me think it is a problem with the Standard Domain Mapping feature. I have not added the Donncha or Multi Site Manager, as far as I know its the standard Domain Tool Mapping function under Tools."

@xdreams there is no Standard Domain Mapping menu in WPMU. You're seeing it because you have a plugin putting it there. Look in /mu-plugins/ to find out what you have.

Freelancers are here:
http://wpmututorials.com/freelancers/

thanks Andrea.

I checked the plugins prior to posting and could not see any Domain Mapping plugin as the Menu says. Its definitely not the Donncha one and when I look at my plugins all I had was below:

cets_EmbedRSS
CodeBanter's Optin Box
Exclude Pages from Navigation
EZContentManager
FP - related videos
FP - testIt
MaxBlogPress Ninja
Subscribe to Comments
To DO List

The link is http://domain.com/wp-admin/tools.php?page=domainmapping
and the content on that page is below?
Does anyone know what Plugin this is?

Domain Mapping
Site Admin Configuration

As a site admin on this site you can set the IP address users need to point their DNS A records at. If you don't know what it is, ping this blog to get the IP address.
Server IP Address:

Active domains on this blog
domain.com

Add new domain
http://www./

If your domain name includes a hostname like "blog" or some other prefix before the actual domain name you will need to add a CNAME for that hostname in your DNS pointing at this blog URL. "www" does not count because it will be removed from the domain name.

If you want to redirect a domain you will need to add a DNS "A" record pointing at the IP address of this server: 70.32.85.190

That looks like Donncha's.
Did you look in the /mu-plugins/ folder on the server?

they do not show up under the Plugins menu.

thanks for the help, yes its the WordPress MU Domain Mapping

version 0.3. I notice there is a newer version 0.41 so maybe i add that and see

I have tried to load the updated version of Wordpress MU Domain Mapping 0.4.1

It won't load (See message below)

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare dm_add_pages() (previously declared in /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/wp-content/mu-plugins/domain_mapping.php:28) in /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/domain_mapping.php on line 29

The sunrise.php and other settings should hold from the previous set-up right?

*Should*, yes. But why even bother to take the chance? Sure, you can get a compare program to see if the two files are the same (or try to do it manually) but you can just upload the one supplied in the new version and you're done.

You got that message because now you have one in the plugins folder and one in the mu-plugins folder.

yeah, im burying myself in a hole here! i ftp it from the Wordpress Interface, which didnt give me any directory selection, so clearly that was not the thing to do

ok, I put it in the correct folder, and now if I click on anything in the Settings menu it asks me to re-login at http://domain.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fdomain.com%2Fwp-admin%2Foptions-general.php%3Fpage%3DCodeBanter_OptinBox.php and rejects my username and password.

Also after deleting all reference to Subdomains and add the Domain, so are new blog is not set-up as a sub-domain, it still will not let me edit or use the dashboard for any blog except the Master Blog.

Any ideas?

What's 3DCodeBanter_OptinBox.php ?

So just that I'm clear:

If I have usa.com as my main WPMU domain and I have city1.abc.com. And I want to have city1.com to be mapped to city1.abc.com then all I need is the domain mapping plugin correct?

Now if I want to have subdomains on city1.com i.e. realestate.city1.com then I will need the Mult Site Plugin?

Thanks in advance.

Yes, that's correct.

Thanks Andrea.

Now what's the difference going to be between using the latest latest version of the existing Multi Site Plugin and the method that you propose in your ebook other than the fact that with the existing MSP the subdomain has to be created first and I think with your method you can create on the fly? (Please correct me if I'm wrong)

Which one is going to be the easist to implement?

Thanks again...

"I think with your method you can create on the fly? "

Yep, it does. You're asking me which one is easier? :D Of course I'm gonna say ours. ;P

Far less options to worry about, works slick right off the bat, we hand-hold to help you get it running.

How did I know you would say that? :)

Is yours a plugin that I simply drop in my folder or do I have to hack the code or something?