Need help with domain mapping

  • As always, I have problems with domain mapping. The host isn’t helpful.
    The setup is pretty straight forward. A network with 6 subsites (not sub domains), 4 of which need to me mapped. I’ve read and tried many ‘ultimate domain mapping’ guides with no succes. Suggestions are very welcome.

    My steps:
    Change the urls of the sites in network admin to the mapped domain. No go.
    Tried the ancient MU multisite mapping plugin. No go.

    I’ve been connecting and disconnecting the domains to my hosting at my hosts admin. Tried url forwards (which of course doesn’t work). Looked at DNS settings. What do I miss? Does wp-config, htaccess or some other file need to be edited? Is there something else I should take care of in my hosts environment?

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • Hi, @gangleri:

    Please verify with your web host that they do, in fact, support Multisite. They may not support the technical requirements needed, especially as related to domain mapping.

    Once confirmed that they support Multisite, then these articles have information that may be of help:

    Some good sanity checks:

    Debugging a WordPress Network

    Ensure that the network has been enabled correctly:

    Create A Network

    Admin topics, including .htaccess and mod_rewrite:

    Multisite Network Administration

    Thread Starter Roy

    (@gangleri)

    Thank you for your reply. My private websites are hosted at the same host and I also have a network there with partial mapped sites. Also then I needed the help of the host. The same guy who helped me back then (a few years back) was one respondent of my call and yesterday he again fixed things. For a large part that is, since now the non-www urls refer to the main website and the www urls to the correct website. But, it’s much better than before.
    The strange (and frustrating) thing is that he doesn’t seem to do anything different from myself, but in case case it does work…

    There’s some more debugging to do though, so thanks for that first link.

    Hi, @gangleri:

    I’m glad you’re making some progress!

    As for name resolution, you will need to account for BOTH domain variations. It sounds like you have www working, but not the apex domain (non-www).

    The domain configured in Network Admin’s “Site Address (URL)” field is your primary domain. This is the inbound domain WordPress will be watching for.

    In order for the non-www domain to resolve to the same site, you could implement a redirect rule in your .htaccess file (or corresponding feature in your hosting tools). The idea is to send non-www traffic to your registered subsite’s primary domain. It is typical to use HTTP 301 (“Permanent”) as the redirect type.

    In practice (your scenario):

    1. Requests to www.example.com will route to the server, and then along to WordPress.
    2. Requests to example.com (non-www) will route to the server, and receive an HTTP 301 redirect instruction to www.example.com. Then the request resolves per #1 above.

    Make sure to account for for http(s) in the redirects. In order to redirect HTTPS traffic, the requested domain MUST have a corresponding SSL certificate. It could be a certificate that handles both domain variations, or two separate certificates.

    Later on, if you decide to set your primary domain as the non-www apex domain, then just reverse the logic above: set the apex domain in Network Admin, and redirect www to the apex.

    Thread Starter Roy

    (@gangleri)

    I turned it around. The servicedesk employer used www urls in WP admin. When I remove www, both variations revert to non-www and load. Fine with me!

    Hi, @gangleri:

    Excellent, that’s great to hear! If you found this thread to be helpful, please make sure to resolve it so that others might find it as well.

    Thanks!

    I found this guide useful : https://wpmudev.com/blog/ultimate-guide-multisite/

    Best

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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