WP3.0.1 MS on Unix/Plesk cannot run subdomain

@ Andrea – just checking – do you mean a straight FTP overwrite (or delete and rewrite) after 2.9.2 configuration, not an upgrade process? I think that may be one method we haven’t tried yet – but surely the ms-blogs redirector / parser file “thingy” (for want of a better name to give to Samuel B) will demand editing of htaccess, plus the additional “obfuscation” keys in wp-config being missing, will cause a non-startable WP build?

Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Leave the htaccess, the wp-config file and the wp-content.

this is know as a *manual upgrade*.

And seriously, if this is the only thing you haven’t tried I am gobsmacked, as this is a common procedure.

But like Otto said, none of these touch any of the wildcard settings on the host. They *can’t*.

@ Andrea – Ah OK – manual upgrade (old pre WP 2.5 route), yes did that way back at the start when the automatic upgrade failed (or appeared to).

@ ipstenu – I hear what you’re saying about VPS control, but as this service is for sites that MUST be on UK hosts for various reasons – no way I’m going to pay 75 UK Pounds a month for 10 GB of disk space when the deal I get from the Cloud hosts is EVERYTHING truly unlimited for a fraction of that – I can even resell unlimited accounts from within this one if I want to, though I’ve not had a client request (or need) that yet. Unlike most UK hosts and their laughable 10 to 20 GB bandwidth a month, this is completely unmetered, so is emails per hour.

Even when looking at US hosting $50 a month for 30GB disk becomes extremely expensive alongside this service. Besides which, we don’t normally build small sites – the average ecommerce store we do takes 20GB disk by launch date, the average WP-centred site is 10GB when built. As for our central adserver, we couldn’t even load the banners folder into 30GB let alone the script and database.

VPS’s are fine for hosting multiple small and compact sites, or for a single moderate size site, but for multiple hosting they’re not feasible with our portfolio, which includes a lot of multi-language builds, therefore larger than normal databases, and admin teams rather than single administrators, therefore higher email volumes that single owner sites.

I’m hoping after this year’s finished to have our own local datacentre and a couple of co-lo servers (one UK and one US) then disk space and most other stuff becomes limitless – using VPNs we can hold redundant data, backups, mail servers and so forth at this end, and have the scripts, current data and images etc front end at the forward servers in the West. Finding the right home for them is a main job during the winter.

Gaz

Rats – forgot to say – I’ll try what you say ipstenu – but I’ll simple move the whole install to a different folder so I can pull it back afterwards – it’d be the same as deleting and reinstalling.

Won’t be tonight though – 9:30pm here already and a load of regular ecommerce stuff to clear before knocking off for the day.

Hi everyone (said timidly with running shoes on).

Well, in the end the issue went round in ever decreasing circles until it was impossible to know what was happening. Finally the hosting company gave me (free gratis) a VPS to “sort it out myself”.

Guess what? I did just that.

OK it took me a fairly intense 4 days of researching everything, but I did finally find the solution, and guess where the blame lies?

I’ll eat humble pie and admit it’s not with WordPress.

I’ll say that again – it’s not WordPress, and I’ve already blogged to that effect.

However, I have to defend the hosting service techs and state that they couldn’t find the issue because they were too dependent on Plesk and AtomiCorp for fine-grain guidance. It was only when I went in ready to blame anyone and anything, and disbelieving anything that sounded remotely like backside covering, that we were able to get to the bottom of it.

The blame lies fairly and squarely with Parallels and their Plesk Panel product. I’ve spent a lot of time in THEIR forums this last four days, and drilling and grilling, and scouring their knowledge base.

(Props #1) Something Andrea posted in another thread a while back kept niggling me – why were so many people specifically having problems with Plesk 9.3 and not other versions?

Well, it seems it’s not so much about the version number, but the timing of 9.3 becoming the mainstream Plesk version, and the sudden elevation of WPMU into mainstream (followed by WP 3.x) at around a similar date.

I found a bug, which Plesk originally identified in October 2009 but didn’t realise the significance of, and hence issued no patch. They just posted an obscure “workaround” in a very long forum thread of workarounds.

But that one workaround on it’s own, didn’t fix the problem, because there was a long-standing knowledge-base article for configuring a (one) named subdomain to which all wildcard subdomain names were then applied in vhosts.conf – this was the other half of the Plesk standard instructions, and it’s just plain wrong for WordPress.

To cut it all short, Plesk got their instructions right for completely the wrong scenario and usage, and tried to force that through for implementation with WP-MS virtual wildcard subdomains. Plesk’s solution is for wildcard subdomains with an on-disk presence (file set & script) – as we have all been agreed here for a long time – that duck ain’t gonna fly with WordPress because WordPress subdomains are virtual in the database.

The hosts’ techs DID “get” this, and had not used the Plesk solution, but had gone for the Apache-standard WordPress method, however, they were missing the mess that Plesk issued as standard architecture up in /etc/httpd/conf.d/

Anyway, I’ve blogged the problem with Plesk’s default architecturing and the solution to get WordPress running here –
How to use WordPress Wildcard Subdomains on Plesk 9.x Hosting
(it’s a new site so not fully developed or populated yet – this was a good opening article for it).

If you read the article in full, you’ll spot the two major problems within Plesk’s default architecture, standing instructions, and workarounds (I think I highlighted them clearly enough) – basically, they screwed up the build of the 9.x architecture, and then compounded it with inappropriate standard configuration documentation for wildcard subdomains.

And they did this just as WordPress MU (then MS) became highly popular, thus the misleading focus on Plesk 9.3, when in fact it applies to the whole 9.x series.

Once I’d spotted the twin problems sitting at opposite ends of the server folder structures, it took me less than 5 minutes to correct them, and prove the solution.

(Props #2) No way this could have been achieved without being given that VPS to play with – full marks to my hosts for doing it – our own in-house systems here don’t use Plesk, and using a shared hosting account wouldn’t give me the access I needed – (Props #3) Ipstenu was right on that score.

Props #4 to Otto for the email correspondence a month back – his comments made me drill into the way Plesk handles webmail services, which proved to be 50% of the issue (though the solo IP question misled me for a while).

Apologies for the bad behaviour. This one was an absolute S-H-1-T to nail – I’ve lost almost 6 months of development time over this … and you know what? No-one ever did send me instructions for a working WPMU or WPMS on Plesk – makes me think I’m the only person who’s achieved it. ??

This topic can now be closed as resolved.

Gaz

Thank you.