New way to tackle this… Last night I tried to install WordPress MU instead of WordPress 3 Beta.
After all, I don’t particularly care about the exciting new features — I just want to run multiple domain names off a single WordPress install so I only have to keep one WordPress install updated and secure instead of 10 or 20 or 50.
For all the stuff I’ve seen about installing MU, I thought it was going to be difficult. It wasn’t, but…
WordPress MU seems to be easier to install than WordPress. You just upload your files to the server and then type in your domain name. You’re given a startup page that asks you for your database name and username and all that and it creates the .htaccess file and starts everything up for you.
However, after lots of this-ing and that-ing I still wound up with my addtional domains not quite working right.
For example:
with maindomain.com being the domain with WordPress MU
I created anotherdomain.maindomain.com and then activated the domain mapping and thus I had
maindomain.com
anotherdomain.com
both apparently working… hurray! But, sadly, no.
When I logged in to anotherdomain.com, my admin screens were at anotherdomain.maindomain.com — when meant that I couldn’t actually be at anotherdomain.com itself and be logged in (at least not without figuring out how to create a login form that didn’t redirect away from the domain).
I did get it working for about 15 minutes after HOURS of switching “Redirect administration pages to blog’s original domain” on and off. I have no idea what got it to work.
Then I added thirddomain.maindomain.com and tried to make that work through thirddomain.com
and everything was broken to back where it was before.
Note: I want users to be able to log in on anotherdomain.com because I want only logged in users to be able to comment. Seems like a good way to cut down spam and chatter and appropriate for that site.
So… more hours of reading through TONS of threads. There are only 2 ways this goes:
- It’s crazy easy – just plug it in and it works
- It never works and just sucks away all of the time you’d otherwise spend sleeping
Here’s a bunch
https://wpmututorials.com/plugins/donnchas-domain-mapping-plugin/
https://frumph.net/articles/wordpress-3-0-multisite-and-domain-mapping/
And THEN I saw someone mention the “development version of the plugin” and I went back to the plugin author’s site
https://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping-05/
and all that did really was lead me back to the WordPress location of the plugin
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/
I still do not know why I did this, but I clicked on the “other versions” link and got this page
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/download/
which has a link to a “Development Version” — and that version worked right away.
Oh, it’s that easy! Find the hidden version of the plugin and that will work. I have no idea why I haven’t seen anyone else who “solved” their problems just putting up this damn link and telling people to try the development version. It seems easy enough to do — there’s the link right above this paragraph and I was able to put it up for free, so why not help out whoever happens to come across these posts and is having the same problem.
WordPress 3 beta and WordPress MU domain mapping plugin doesn’t redirect backend properly and is not working.
So far, it all seems to be solved with just a little bit of information.
Number Six: Whose side are you on?
Number Two: That would be telling. We want information… information… in formation.
Number Six: You won’t get it.
Number Two: By hook or by crook, we will.
At this point, I’m kinda tempted to try installing WordPress 3.0 beta again, but this time use the development version of the plugin. Hate to jinx myself now that I’ve gotten something working, but if I really can get it to work then I ought to make it really work so that I can start using it on a website for realsies.
Related Posts:
Eric
you should have a look at this : https://ottopress.com/2010/wordpress-3-0-multisite-domain-mapping-tutorial/ , I’ve had the same problems as yours and when following this tut, everything went well. I now have lot of domains running on the same distrib, each one getting its admin under its own domain name and through the main admin console as well, wow wow wow
@oliver
Thanks for that link!
For someone who is just looking to run a lot of blogs all by themselves (no other users involved) and reduce updating and maintenance headaches, this is wow wow wow.
Please note that all my efforts to get Multisite to work have been replaced with a new service that allows one-click management of all your WordPress installs from one dashboard — which is exactly what I had been trying to achieve.
see this post:
https://www.ericshefferman.com/2012/09/07/you-cant-go-out-this-friday-night-its-time-to-update-wordpress-to-version-3-4-2/