Domain Mapping Error 403/500

Two big things.

1) You don’t need to map anything with the plugin. Get rid of it and just make sure you set up flingem.com to work with subdomains.

2) Your subdomain’s pointing to the wrong place. Your subdomains MUST point to the root fo flingem.com and must NOT create a subdirectory. For most sites, that means you map the subdomain to public_html or www.

Ooooohh. So i should have pointed the CNAMEs at flingem.com/public-html? Ooops.

Thanks for that tip about not mapping. Could you let me know why? I spent two days trying to map a subdomain and nothing i came across said that. Is it because of the version of WordPress? And will this all work with dynamic IP?

A last question – when you say set up flingem.com to work with subdomains, what does that mean? Do I need to do redirects? Thanks for your help.

Jennifer

I meant public_html

Update: I contacted LunarPages about changing the CNAMEs to point to flingem.com/public_html, and this is their reply:

“Hello Jennifer,

Please note that CNAME’s can only be directed towards FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Names). This means that URL’s such as those which extends to a folder is not applicable. CNAME’s can direct to domains and sub domains but the redirect to a sub directory would have to be done at the location it is being directed towards.

If you are simply looking to direct the sub domain towards the root level setting the CNAME’s to flingem.com would suffice.

Also, the root directory of your domain is “public_html” but simply using the domain of flingem.com will access this folder by default. In short, adding the /public_html is not required.

Please advise.”

…did i misunderstand your response (#2)?

In response to #1, I’ve removed the mapping, including the IP and CNAME values from the Network Admin>Settings>Domain Mapping screen and the mapping under the Tools menu for the site.

I’ve found so little information about WordPress Multisite 3.2.1 and domain mapping; most articles apply to 3.0 (Super Admin, etc). I’m wishing I had installed an older version.

Thanks again for taking your time out to help.

Jennifer

Yeah, you did misunderstand ??

We’re talking about a couple different things, but most importantly, you shouldn’t need to be goofing around with DNS right now.

What you’re trying to do is create a subdomain, outside of DNS settings, in your vhosts. See, your DNS should already know that anything.yourdomain.com goes to yourdomain.com – You don’t have to worry about that end of it.

But you have to tell your server what to do with that.

https://wpmututorials.com/how-to/enabling-wildcard-subdomains/ is one tutorial, but if you’re using something like cPanel it’s even easier. You just make a subdomain with the value of * (yes *) and make sure that points NOT to public_html/* but to plain old public_html

Ok. Thank you. I inquired with LunarPages if they can confirm whether or not they support wildcard domains. From what I understood, they don’t. The only records they let us add are MX records, and changing nameservers. After reading the link, i wonder if I need wildcards? It says
“Note: if you choose the subfolder option on installation, you do not have to do either one of these steps.” My wp_config file has this line in it: define( ‘SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL’, false ); So i understood from that that my installation was a subfolder installation. So a new site is created as flingem.com/alpha. I just want a user to access the url alpha.flingem.com and be taken to that site. Is that not going to work? This is an experimental site, for learning purposes, so if i have to uninstall and reinstall, that’s ok.

Update: wow, lunarpages is quick. I’m not finished this message and they’ve responded. The DO support wildcard domains! So I’m going to request that unless you advise otherwise.

Thanks again. BTW, I went to your website and learned that ‘Missionaries and Cannibals’ is NOT a roleplaying game. lol

If you want to use subdomains, change define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false ); to true ?? And yes, it’s THAT easy.

And if you do that AND have wildcard subdomains, then you totally can have <anything>.flingem.com ??

(And I love RPGs too ?? Hence my silly title.)

Hi Ipstenu,
The hosting company implemented the wildcard, and it looks like it’s propagated (whatsmydns.net). I changed wp_config: define( ‘SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL’, true ); Then when I went to view my sites as the Network Admin, they were all renamed flingem.com. I deleted all but the primary site, and recreated Alpha, but when I click to ‘visit’ the site, it takes me to flingem.com.

I have also installed some plugins, such as ManageWP, AllInOneSEO, ManageWP – Worker, and Google XML Sitemaps. Could a plugin be messing things up?

Also, should i uncheck all the boxes on the Network Admin Domain Mapping screen?

You may be tired of hearing it, but thanks again. I really appreciate your help.

Jennifer

Oh, I still have the CNAMES pointing alpha.flingem.com to flingem.com. R they conflicting?

Also, should i uncheck all the boxes on the Network Admin Domain Mapping screen?

I said this before. Delete the plugin. Get rid of it, you do not need it, and it will screw you up if you’re not mapping DOMAINS. By which we mean TOP level domains. seconddomain.com is a domain. sub.domain.com is a SUB Domain. Don’t mess with that ??

Now. If I go to foobar.flingem.com that redirects to https://www.lunarpages.com/ which isn’t what we want at all. That should kick you to https://flingem.com/wp-signup.php?new=foobar and that it’s not means that something’s wrong with the wildcard setup.

Turn off ALL your plugins. This is, as you say, a NEW install. Do MultiSite then plugins ??

Ok, thanks. I thought you meant just to remove the mapping, not the plugin. I did a removal of WordPress, then reinstalled as multisite, changed the wp_config file, and now I’m back up. No plugins except the default Akismet and Hello Dolly which are not Activated.

LunarPages did say it would take 2-4 hours for the wildcard change to propagate. it’s been over 4…maybe it’s too early. I’ll give it a couple more hours, then if I still have the same issue, I’ll contact them.

Do I need to get rid of the CNames?

Thanks again.

Do I need to get rid of the CNames?

I hesitate at saying yes, only because I’m not entirely sure what you did.

I would tell LunarPages “Hi, for some reason foobar.flingem.com redirects to your main domain and not mine. Is there something I need to do in my DNS settings to make wildcard domains work properly?” That may give you the answer you need.

Hi Ipstenu. Ok, Lunarpages is still trying to get it working on their side. I sent them the link you included in this post. For the CNAMEs, I don’t know how LunarPages set it up, but i went to https://www.hscripts.com/tools/HDNT/dns-record.php and looked up alpha.flingem.com, and the result is:

Domain type class result
alpha.flingem.com CNAME IN flingem.com

And the wildcard:
*.flingem.com A In 216.227.214.98

And also:
https://www.flingem.com. CNAME IN flingem.com.
flingem.com. A IN 216.227.214.98

Should that *.flingem.com be ‘*.’?

Thanks very much.

If you have the wildcard A name, I don’t believe you need to define the cName as well, but that’s not my strong suite :/

Hi Ipstenu. I wanted to thank you for all of your help. You are very patient with noobies and really pointed me in the right direction. Also, Lunar Pages finally got the wildcard domain configured correctly, so my new sites are opening correctly.

Thanks so much.

Jennifer