2 Domain mapped sites get 403 Forbidden error, But 3 still work fine

You can’t map a domain to the main domain. That is, I can map a domain to mainsite.com/site2 but NOT mainsite.com

Where are you mapping these sites to?

Yes, that’s correct.
mainsite.com/site2 etc. through /site5
total of 6 sites. The mainsite.com/ and 5 mapped to mainsite.com/site1 and so one.

These have been up and running without incident for over a year. They were set up correctly initially.

At a loss…

had a typo:

So basically…

Mainsite – https://www.mainsite.com resolves UNTIL adding /domainmapped site/

Site 1 – https://www.mainsite.com/site1 – /site1 gets 403 Error
Forbidden You don’t have permission to access /site1/ on this server.

Site 2 – https://www.mainsite.com/site2 – Resolves fine to mapped site

Site 3 – https://www.mainsite.com/site3 – Resolves fine to mapped site

Site 4 – https://www.mainsite.com/site4 – Resolves fine to mapped site

Site 5 – https://www.mainsite.com/site5 – /site5 gets 403 Error
Forbidden You don’t have permission to access /site5/ on this server.

Clear as mud.

Mainsite – https://www.mainsite.com resolves UNTIL adding /domainmapped site

Adding where? In WP or just the DNS/Vhost stuff?

Set up in WP and like I said, it was working fine for over a year.

Yeah, but I have to ask since I’m not, y’know, you ??

The logical question we always ask is “What did you change recently?”

Did any domains expire? Did any server changes happen?

LOL, you don’t want to be me, its confusing. Nothing expired, it is hosted on our own server, where some minor changes were made 2 months ago, but thought that would impact all domain mapped urls, not just 2 of the 5.
All 5 are aliased and domain mapped to the same main url.com. We have deactivated and reactivated the 2 sites in question, re-saved, it re-saved permalinks, deactivated plugins and nothing seems to have worked on that side.

What type of changes or server settings should we look for on our server settings? Should we upgrade to newer WP version and hope it resolves.

We are out of ideas with this strange multisite quirk.

Thanks for any help.

All 5 are aliased and domain mapped to the same main url.com.

Wait … what? Domain mapped to the same URL?

There are three separate peices to domain mapping.

1) DNS – this has to point to where your WP site is installed.

2) Vhosts – This is when you add a site as a parked or add-on domain. It creates the entry on the server to add the domain and points that to (again) where WP is inatlled.

3) Domain Mapping via WP. This should never point to the main URL, nor all the same domain really. You can only have one ‘primary’ domain with mapping, so this should point to specific sites on your network.

This is why I was asking how you mapped and to where. You keep making it sound like you’ve MAPPED (step 3) all the domains to the same site (the main domain of the network) which is highly problematic.

Assuming you DID NOT do that, and each domain is properly pointing to it’s own site, check the vhosts and make sure that looks right. The primary domain should be first on the list, followed by the others.

Perhaps I am confusing the terms for “mapped to” we have a main domain, call it main.com

we have 5 sites that are “parked” on our server

5 sites records then pointed to our server

5 sites domain mapped with WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin in WP on our main domainto work as independent sites assigned to the main.com

All sites are readily accessed and function properly from web, but 2/5 are not accessible from within the WP Dashboard to Visit the site, say after updating an image.

All was set up following guide as seen here:
https://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/wordpress-multisite-beyond-basics-essentials-and-domain-mapping/

If this weren’t set up right it should have never worked or failed long ago we think.

You’d think, wouldn’t you? The thing is WP upgrades and plugins upgrade and servers upgrade. And everything can change just because ONE small change did things oddly.

we have 5 sites that are “parked” on our server

5 sites records then pointed to our server

So that may be the issue. You need to make sure those are still working. How did you park them? What tool/panel/file?

Checked all settings and DNS at registrar site and our server DNS. All the 5 domains are parked appropriately.
Maybe we need to post question on the WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin blog???

No, I tagged this “wordpress-mu-domain-mapping”

Honestly, it’s something endemic of YOUR setup, and I hate saying that like you don’t even know ??

How did you park the domains, though? I’m not asking this multiple times for my health you know ?? Being able to magically debug people from a million miles away, without looking at your server, is to ask questions that make no sense to YOU that they’re applicable. But after all, if you understood why I was asking them, you’d solve the problem on your own. I’m trying to get an idea of the whole picture so I can see where it might have broken down.

When things suddenly break, it’s generally because something was changed. Which is obvious and I know you know that already. But since I don’t know what you’ve done, what your admins have done, what your users have done, and what your servers have done, I have to ask…

You should make sure, if you haven’t already, that you’re testing things on a site with ALL plugins off (yeah I know), and the default theme activated.

Thanks, we understand you are working off little information from our side. We parked the domains through the Domain Control Panel at godaddy where they are registered. They are parked and pointed through the A- record to our server’s IP where the domain they are mapped to is hosted.

As long as they function for now I guess that’s fine. We are looking into the easiest and most complete ways to go ahead and separate them back into single domains to eliminate these issues.

Okay, so all that is done normally. *grrr* There’s no sensible reason for that to magically break unless someone diddled with something. Or a file went corrupt… have you tried a repair of the DB?