Issues after SSL install

Networked WP was intended to all be accessed through a single domain. Individual sites are referenced either by sub-domain or sub-folder, not by different domains. There are a few ways to cause multiple domains to access various network sites. Whatever was done to accomplish this has become broken and needs repair.

It’s working in part since the front pages are working, but added post slugs are not being detected as needing to be passed on to WP at all. As an example, lets say your network is a sub-folder style installation and the allisonandoren.com site is redirected to /wordpressroot/wedding/. That much is working. But when we request allisonandoren.com/our-story/, that should be redirected to WP as /wordpressroot/wedding/our-story/, but the server is trying to find a physical folder by that name instead. It’s not passing the request on to WP, and is instead returning a server level 404. (as opposed to a “soft” WP 404 due to query failure)

That’s what’s wrong, but the fix depends on how you are handling allisonandoren.com requests in general. Maybe knowing what the actual problem is is enough for you to zero in on the problem. I hope this is at least of some help.

Thank you.

I had WP Multisite with subdomains working with domain mapping before. Is there a reason that enabling SSL would somehow impact that domain mapping? I can’t figure out which part of the installation was or might have been impacted as a result of these changes, though based on your response it seems like it might be an issue with how Bluehost is associating the “add on” domain name. My wordpress install is in public_html/wordpress, but I have the htaccess configured so the /wordpress part isn’t in the URL names. I would like to think if I had some sense of where to look for what might be broken, I could resolve the issue through some trial error and troubleshooting procedures I’ve undertaken before, but it is unclear to me where the problem might even lie right now and how adding the SSL would have resulted in the server trying to find physical folders instead of the WP databases.

SSL itself wouldn’t change anything, but there could be an indirect effect. For example, if add-on domains somehow relied upon port forwarding that was set up for port 80, it could fail for HTTPS requests on port 440*. I’m pretty sure that is not what’s happening, it’s just an example.

A WP network installed in a sub-folder does not normally work with subdomains, they require a root installation. Clearly you’ve found a workaround, which is apparently still working since your site home pages are accessible.

Double check your .htaccess rules and verify the file contains rules as specified in orenstransitpage.com/wp-admin/network/setup.php . Though I’m not sure how or if it might be modified to work with alternate domains instead of sub-domains. Normally, this part:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d

tells the server detect missing file or sub-folder conditions and apply subsequent rules to send such requests to WP. This is apparently not happening since the server is returning 404 not found for such requests.

*ETA: Port 443, duh!

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by bcworkz. Reason: wrong port #

Thanks for the help, I found the issue(s) within the .htaccess file with your guidance.

Nice! You’re welcome.