Disabling main site in a Multisite installation

  • joeq2

    (@joeq2)


    4 years ago

    I have a WordPress Multisite installation on a Bitnami stack running on a VPS.

    I’ve been able to set things up so that I have multiple blogs running at, e.g., science.mydomain.ca, projects.mydomain.ca, music.mydomain.ca, as well as sites like https://www.otherdomain.ca, all within the Multisite installation. So far, so good.

    What I would like to do is to DISABLE the “main site”, i.e. https://www.mydomain.ca or mydomain.ca, so that nothing appears when users visit those URLs or other URLs like https://www.mydomain.ca/subsite, while keeping all the subdomain sites running as they do now.

    Right now, mydomain.ca shows “User’s Blog” (an unconfigured WordPress site) and mydomain.ca/something is interpreted as an uncreated page on that blog. I’d like to make that all disappear (or alternatively, just display a fixed basic html page, not within WordPress, that I can leave blank)

    I’ve searched through these forums but haven’t been able to figure out how to do this yet.

    Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

    • This topic was modified 4 years ago by James Huff. Reason: moved to Networking WordPress since this is a multisite question
Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • JNashHawkins

    (@jnashhawkins)

    Try using the domain mapping to map the main site to something like

    noc.thatdomainyoudontwantanytraffic.on

    which will then be hidden by default since nobody knows it exists.

    Now

    noc.thatdomainyoudontwantanytraffic.on/admin/

    will be your network operations center login for your multisite.

    You can enhance that a bit by jambing a meta-refresh or a maintenance mode popup onto that page to force people off the site should they find it or redirect them to one of your other pages as you see fit.

    Thread Starter joeq2

    (@joeq2)

    Thanks very much. From what I understand, your approach will just direct visitors to a “can’t find this website” error message.

    I think the easiest approach in my case (which will probably fit the bill) is just to have the main site be a plain white theme with a dummy image — so still WordPress, but there’s nothing interesting to see.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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