ScottJSA

BTW if it helps, the site is: jobseekersadvice.com and the SD I’m trying to setup are forum. and dir.

Thanks,
Scott

I can setup a wildcard DNS via “advanced DNS” options in my control panel.

I can also setup a subdomain via the main domain in control panel. However that method requires me to assign a subfolder to hold the content and when setup the subdomain automatically 301 redirects to that sub folder. Via this option, I can’t add * as the subdomain name. I think this is basically just a quick and easy way for their customers to setup a SD without managing a new site.

The third option is to setup a SD via a new hosting package, which works and lets me manage the DNS of the subdomain. However, I was advised by the hosting company not to do this (as it would conflict with the main domain DNS settings if I already have those subdomains setup).

The exact advice was:

If you create the sub-domain/directory on the parent package and use a 301 redirect back into the parent root directory. You’d need to remove the existing sub-domain so the DNS records go back to default.

Which I’ve done. The effect that has is;

dir.example.com 301s to example.com/dir (server does this automatically). I then 301 example.com/dir to example.com which just shows the main site as you’d expect.

TBH, I’m not sure the hosting company are familiar enough with the setup to understand what is needed, and I don’t have the knowledge to be able to explain it well.

Scott

Just to add to this, I’ve been chatting with my hosting company’s support desk to no avail.

I’ve setup separate subdomains for both forum.example.com and dir.example.com, with root and WWW A records for each set to the same IP address as https://www.example.com.

The sub domains are resolving and showing an apache server test page. A header checker shows the correct IP address, but 403 forbidden response.

The hosting is shared hosting, which is suspect may be at the crux of the problem, but I’ve read that multi-site setup can be fine on shared hosting.

What I’m trying to figure out is where the process is failing. Sub domains are resolving properly. Multi site is working properly as far as I can tell. Is this a server issue that’s simply not passing the subdomain request to the WP install?

Scott