Which? In Multisite setup, install domains as subfolders, subdomains, or parked

  • There is disagreement among the dev team, and online literature also contradicts one another, or does not state clearly.
    The question is for non-master domains, where must they reside on the server, and how are they “linked” to the master domain.

    Some say the other domains must be sub-directories in the public root.
    Some say multisite only works if they are parked domains that feed off the master domain.
    Some say they must be sub-domains of the master domain. (eg. sub.this.com).
    Which is it?

    This is what we want: sharing the same information architecture (DB, images, plugins, themes, etc) and design elements – all the websites use the same resources. But, they are accessed as independent websites with their own domain customizations.

    So the first installation did other domains as sub-directories of the public root. The Master site (of course higher up in hierarchy) works perfectly – – all images in the master site. But the other domains do not pick up plugins, or even have access higher up to access images.
    Is the problem the directory structure, or is it some code somewhere that needs to point to the other domains.

    We have tried about ten different suggestions thus far in our troubleshooting effort.

    Some insight will be much appreciated.


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  • Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    Multisite can be either sub-domain or sub-folder based. Other domains can be mapped to these either way. You cannot use parked domains because they do not lead to any server resource. Domains you map to your multisite need to be routed to the main WP installation via DNS and virtual host.

    Sub-sites are for the most part completely independent sites. All content and media are stored independent from other sites. However, it is feasible for custom code to access content and media belonging to other sub-sites or the main site. This is done through switch_to_blog(). After that, you could use get_post() or whatever to get content belonging to the switched to site, but when output it still goes out as though from the switched from site.

    Thread Starter tvejacques

    (@tvejacques)

    Thank you – very much appreciated.
    This is the sense I made of it.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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