Multisite on subdirectory, but new subdomains direct child of root?

  • Our current network configuration is a bit of a mess, so please bear with me.

    Issue 1

    We have a wildcard – *.example.com – that points to example.com/a. a.example.com is the primary subdomain serving that content.

    As we’re starting to expand, I’d like to get multisite set up so that we can create subdomains that serve their own unique content without having to install WP on each of them.

    Since our wildcard is pointing to a subdirectory, by my understanding, that means that I’d also have to configure multisite on that same subdirectory. Does that mean any subdomains created on that instance of multisite will be b.a.example.com instead of b.example.com? If so, is there any way around this?

    Issue 2

    Additionally, our wp-config file is set up to display whatever subdomain is entered in the address bar, so foobar.example.com would show the content of example.com/a, but still display foobar.example.com in the address bar. Here’s what that code looks like:

    define('WP_SITEURL', 'https://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);
define('WP_HOME', 'https://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);

    Are there going to be any issues with our current wp-config setup and multisite? My hope is that if there’s no subdomain explicitly defined on multisite, it’ll just behave like it currently is (serving example.com/a with anything.example.com in the address bar), but I’m unsure if those parameters might conflict with multisite somehow.

    Issue 3

    Keeping the first two things in mind, we already have a few subdirectories set up with their own WP installation, as a direct subdomain of our root domain – so c.example.com points to example.com/c. It’s my understanding that these shouldn’t be affected at all, but I just wanted to be sure.

    I’m honestly not sure at this stage if it would be better to try to configure multisite, or to just keep doing what we’re doing with unique installations and maybe just use something like ManageWP to manage them all.

    Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    For a sub-domain multisite installation to work correctly, it must be installed in the server’s public root directory. Only sub-directory installations can be installed outside of public root. Why couldn’t you move the installation in /a to root, then convert to multisite?

    The extra installations in /c or whatever can be OK as-is, as long as you don’t try to add subdomains with the same name as existing directories. You could instead import these other WP sites into the one multisite installation. Though it would mean the site’s URLs would change unless you go with a sub-directory multisite.

    Thread Starter Leah

    (@edikitt)

    Ah, gotcha. Sounds like maybe multi-site won’t work for us then, unless we re-structure the way our site architecture is laid out.

    The way it’s set up currently, our root domain example.com is used as our primary brand site, while the subdomain a.example.com is used for our white-label program.

    The complication arises because we offer both branded and non-branded vanity URLs for our clients, and the non-branded vanity URLs rely on the wildcard to serve the content from a.example.com. That way, our onboarding team doesn’t actually do anything to “set up” the non-branded vanity URLs. You could literally type in skjdfhskdfhsgkd.example.com into the address bar right now and it would serve a.example.com (while retaining skjdfhskdfhsgkd.example.com in the address bar).

    It sounds like in this case, if we want to use multi-site for subdomains while retaining the functionality of our wildcard/non-branded URLs, we’d want to put it all under a new root domain, examplewhitelabel.com or whatever. That way, we could have both multi-site installed at the root and the wildcard pointing to the root.

    Im new at the forum:

    my multisite for subdomains is installed with a new subdomain created.

    Also,I set up a wildcard subdomain on my bluehost

    the main site, works fine. The subdomain shows up under my sites

    However, I get : The requested URL /index.php was not found on this server.

    Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request., when I click on dashboard for the new subdomain

    Thank you in advance for any suggestions

    To be clear, the error occurs when I click on the “DASHBOARD” for the new subdomain site

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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