Moving Multisite to subfolders AND changing domain?

You should be able to search for the whole domain (old.com/wp/) and replace that.

Then go back through and look for /wp/ and see what comes up.

Keep good backups, this may be a little trial and error ??

Hi Ipstenu,

I have been reading through your excellent tutorial on Moving WordPress Multisite, from “Half-Elf on Tech” (one of the very first blogs that comes up when searching “Move WordPress Multisite”). ?? I’m not sure if what I’m trying to do — make a physical move of the Multisite install to a subfolder to minimize “clutter” is possible at all due to the limitations and complexities of the Multisite system. ?? From what I understand, the Multisite functionality won’t work if WordPress is installed (or relocated) to a subfolder of the server. Multisite would have to be disabled and individual blogs given their own separate WordPress installs, or Multisite remain at the root of the server, else it won’t work. At least that’s what I understand — correct me if I’m wrong. ?? In that case, what I would rather do is to change the URL of this particular blog to a subdomain of my main URL.

My site is on a free shared server (Helio Host), so the URL is in the format username.heliohost.org, and WordPress is installed at the root, so there is no old.com/wp/ as of this moment. I just purchased a domain (two in fact, a .com and .net to guard against “squatters”) ?? and have mapped them to my original username.heliohost.org URL. So once the DNS has finished “propagating” (I believe is the term), I will be able to access my blog via mydomain.com or mydomain.net as well as username.heliohost.org. But what I would like is for this “main” blog to have a URL of blog1.mydomain.com rather than just mydomain.com (at the root). I can’t login to my own WordPress network right now, because the DNS hasn’t updated yet and I don’t want to take a chance of “interrupting” anything (it’s supposed to take at least 48 hours to run its course, and I only did the mapping at quarter to midnight EDT Saturday).

But I’ll use the image at your own site (borrowed from the same article) to illustrate what I mean. (It’s here as a link because it doesn’t seem that WordPress allows you to post images directly in forum threads.) ??

https://halfelf.org/files/2012/01/site-home-url.jpg

In the example, (visually) replace ipstenu.org with heliohost.org, so pretend that my blog is tech.heliohost.org. Eventually this “main” domain is going to read mydomain.com (or, say, tech.com) rather than tech.heliohost.org. What I don’t want is for the main blog to be at tech.com but blog1.tech.com. In my network settings, the blank with the domain URL is greyed out and not editable; the blank for “Path” is greyed out too and cannot be changed. Is this because right now there’s only one blog there, and/or because the URL is already a subdomain (myname.heliohost.org)? How can I have this “main” blog be at blog1.tech.com rather than tech.com? Is it possible for your “main” blog (i.e. the one I first set up when installing Multisite) be at a subdomain and not “level 1”?

Ah, okay.

You can’t do what you want to do, because your host sucks.

My site is on a free shared server (Helio Host), so the URL is in the format username.heliohost.org, and WordPress is installed at the root, so there is no old.com/wp/ as of this moment.

If you cannot make your URL be username.org (or whatever you want) from within HelioHost, then the best we can do is domain map username.heliohost.org/sitename

We CANNOT map anything to username.heliohost.org – just doesn’t work.

OK… I’m a little confused.

If you cannot make your URL be username.org (or whatever you want) from within HelioHost, then the best we can do is domain map username.heliohost.org/sitename

I can, in a way, make the URL be username.org, via the use of what’s called parked domains, so that username.org “points to” the same content at username.heliohost.org. According to their Wiki, I can add a parked domain (which I already have done — they do offer a cPanel login), so that username.heliohost.org has an “alias” of username.org. I can therefore access username.heliohost.org via username.org, or will be able to once the DNS changes finish at about midnight tonight into Tuesday. The way I understand this is that it’s kind of like a shortcut in Windows opens up the .exe of a program, so that clicking on an icon that says “Best M$ Word Alternative.lnk” ?? starts OpenOfficeWriter.exe. ??

Within this system, I can then enter a subdomain for use with my parked domain, so that in cPanel I could enter blog1.username.org. Opening username.org opens up the same content as username.heliohost.org, but the primary URLs are different, i.e. when writing posts and pages and linking to media, etc. Is it not possible to change my URL within WordPress to the parked domain (which still points to the same content) — do I have to change the main domain, which is username.heliohost.org? Can domain mapping work with parked domains (or aliases) per the information in that Wiki post, so that I can use my individual blog on a subdomain blog1.username.org?

I apologize if I sound confusing — I myself am a little puzzled on this. It’s sort of difficult with regards to understanding parked vs. primary domains. I get that subdomains are like the equivalent of middle names with people — with a person you can have jingleheimerschmidt.com and the subdomain (or middle name) is johnjacob.jingleheimerschmidt.com. (Far as I know, his name is not my name too.) ??

What I want is for my blog right now to be at johnjacob.jingleheimerschmidt.com, and subsequent blogs to show up at johnjoseph.jingleheimerschmidt.com, johnjimmy.jingleheimerschmidt.com, etc., even though the current URL is “hardcoded” as jingleheimerschmidt.heliohost.org. I cannot afford an upgrade to paid hosting, and Helio is pretty good in terms of freehosts, comparable in features to some of the more expensive ones out there. It’s Multisite that’s got me confused a bit.

I had a look at the Multisite Domain Mapping plugin for WordPress and have noticed that it is only compatible up to WordPress v3.3. I use WordPress 3.4.2 on my site. I don’t know if the plugin will actually work since it’s not marked as upgraded to the latest version.

But in your opinion, would it be best to scrap Multisite for the time being and start over, i.e. do a clean install of WordPress without ANY content or blogs whatsoever (after a comprehensive backup, of course!), and BEFORE restoring any backups set up how I want my domains to be (i.e. create a few “dummy” blogs as placeholders for johnjacob.schmidt.com, johnjoseph.schmidt.com, etc.), redoing the MU setup via WP-config.php AFTER installing WP itself and not via the initial install?

If so, how would I best go about doing a backup of my blog — not just content but plugins and their settings — so that it can be restored as a “single” blog to a Multisite system? As in, I’d have jingleheimerschmidt.com all set as the “front page” and then restore this blog to johnjacob.jingleheimerschmidt.com with johnjoseph (etc.) and johnjimmy (etc.) still available for use at some future date? When doing backups, do the “serial data” problems mentioned in your blog occur when restoring?

If not, is it possible to “map” to a parked domain as mentioned above? I’d be OK with having the “clutter” in the main folder if I could still have this blog which is at jingleheimerschmidt.heliohost.org be located at the parked domain of johnjacob.jingleheimerschmidt.com. As it stands right now, once my domains fully update, it will just be at jingleheimerschmidt.com.

In some of the images on this tutorial by Otto Press, I see that he too has a blog located at “/” and has mapped the other one, at /op/, to ottopress.com. I wonder then, if I can’t physically “move” any of the files (without starting from scratch), if in that visual example one could map the blog at “/” to blog1.ottopress.com and not just ottopress.com.

I hope you’re kind of able to see what I’m saying. You’ve been very patient with a newbie thus far and I thank you for that. ??

You can’t park (aka map) the main domain of a multisite.

If you park a domain like you describe, then you can map it to sub sites, but never the primary one.

Hi Ipstenu,

I figured out a way to get what it was I wanted done. I’ve given up on Multisite as I am by no means a programmer and the setup was causing me headaches. Like you and others have said, Multisite isn’t for everyone.

What I ended up doing was disabling multisite and just moving my blog (as a “normal” install) to blogs.elizabethsebastian.com/pop-psych/ (that’s the real domain), per the instructions on WP Codex: Moving WordPress.

Furthermore, I installed this plugin: WP Move by Mert Yazicioglu which works very well with serial data. I didn’t have much left over after disabling Multisite, but it still worked pretty well. I don’t know if you’ve linked to it on your blog, but for a newbie like me I find it highly useful.

I once more appreciate your patience in dealing with a newbie like me, and again want to say thank you for all your help. It just turned out Multisite wasn’t for me, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be the solution for other users. However, WP should consider themselves very grateful to have support staff such as yourself in helping people weed out the many difficulties of hosting a blog. Thanks for everything, and oh, by the way… I just love the hat! ??

It’s not a problem ?? Multisite is awesome when it’s right, but it really isn’t for everything ??