Non-wordpress subdomains?

  • brasselleg

    (@brasselleg)


    9 years ago

    Hi,

    We currently host multiple blogs in separate WordPress installations. They share the same subdomain:
    blogs.example.com/blog1
    blogs.example.com/blog2
    etc.

    We’d like to pull all of these blogs together into one multisite installation.

    We also have many non-Wordpress applications running in additional subdomains on the same domain:
    notwordpress.example.com
    alsonotwordpress.example.com
    etc.

    In the past, we explored multisite as an option but rejected it because of complications preserving our non-wordpress subdomains.

    Although I’ve seen some posts about this problem from a few years ago, I’m having trouble finding recent discussion about it.

    I’m wondering about folks’ experience with WordPress 4.x multisite and subdomains outside wordpress? Have you been able to successfully configure multisite to accommodate non-wordpress subdomains?

    Thanks for your help!
    Emily

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

  • Hello, Emily

    You probably saw limitations for subdomain multisite + non-multisite subdomains, like:

    blog1.example.com (or blog1.blogs.example.com)
    blog2.example.com (or blog2.blogs.example.com)
    +
    nonwp.example.com

    But this is simple to achieve in most hosting companies. For those which use cPanel, you would simply need a wildcard subdomain (*.example.com or *.blogs.example.com, depending on where the WP is installed and which URLs you want for subsites) with it’s document root set for the same path as your main WP installation (where Multisite will be enabled). The other subdomains/addon domains have their own document root and won’t be affected by Multisite.

    However, if you are going to use a subdomain like blogs.example.com (not just example.com) to host your main WP, I recommend you do set blogs.example.com docroot in an exclusive directory, outside the standard public_html where the other subdomains are, or WordPress .htacess rules may affect them and vice-versa. i.e.: set the docroot for blogs.example.com in a path like /home/youruser/blogs/ instead /home/youruser/public_html/blogs.example.com (this is the cPanel default).

    For a subdirectory based Multisite install, like the one in your example (multisitedomain.com/blog1, multisitedomain.com/blog2, etc), no DNS/wildcard changes are required, it should work out of the box. Just activate Multisite and start creating the blogs. However, my recommendation of using an exclusive directory is still valid, if you are going to use a subdomain instead a top-level domain.

    Note: if you do plan allowing other domains to be mapped on top of your subsites (e.g.: blogone.com mapped to blogs.example.com/blog1), I strongly advise you to install the multisite on the top-level domain (i.e., domain.com – so, using public_html as docroot). Otherwise, you will have to either:

    • add each mapped domain as an “Addon Domain” on your control panel manually (and specifying the docroot to the same path where your multisite is); or
    • use some .htaccess rules on public_html that will dynamically point the docroot of your multisite for any [sub]domain other than yours subdomains/non-mulsite sites

    I am following the thread and I will be willing to help should you have any questions.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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