WordPress Multisite questions

I think you are confusing control panel functions with WordPress’s domain mapping abilities.

Think of it this way…

The domain or subdomain comes into the webserver.

If the server doesn’t care, then it passes straight through to WordPress to be handled by mapping.

If there’s a control panel then the CP will try to direct the domain to the directory the domain points at. If the CP doesn’t know what to do with the domain (or subdomain) it will reject it with an error from the webserver (usually Apache).

If the CP thinks the domain belongs to WordPress (via the directory mapping in the CP) it will send it to that directory…

If WordPress recognizes the domain it will respond with the mapped site.

If WordPress doesn’t recognize the domain it will respond with a 404 error.

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Don’t be too quick to think the CP is just a problem though…

It helps secure your site.

It also allows more configuration options for subdomain and domain routing to applications. This is how you might run two or more WordPress websites or an ad server system… etc.

Once you get your head around that one time it usually gets clearer and recognizing the difference in the error pages presented by their origin (Apache or WordPress) will usually tell you where the problem is.

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One more stumbling block is DNS…

You need DNS configured to send the domain or the subdomain to the server’s IP.

From there, either with the CP then that deals with it or else WordPress handles it.

If you get a DNS error then the domain isn’t going to the server at all.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by JNashHawkins.

Hi JNashHawkins,

Thank you for taking the time to write a detailed explanation. I really appreciate the thoroughness of your answer. I do have a follow up question which i’m not sure if I’m understanding from your answer completely. In a WordPress MultiSite setup, under Network Admin – Sites, you can get a listing of all the sites. If you click on Edit for the site, you can set/change the Site Address (URL) on the default tab that comes up, you can also click on the alias’s tab on that dashboard (not the cPanel’s alias dashboard, but WordPress Multisite domain mapping aliases)

For reference, this is a cpanel server running a WordPress Multisite.

I have the main domain is domain.com, there is a subsite created called subdomain.domain.com. And the Site Address for the subsite is reflected as that. If I add a domain alias (via WordPress Multitsite – not cpanel alias) of domain2.com and add domain2.com under the cpanel addon domains, this doesn’t work. It acts like cpanel doesn’t know where to direct the traffic and comes up with the cpanel’s “Sorry, contact the webmaster page”

I’m wondering if the multisite aliases doesn’t work or I’m doing something wrong in configuration, it is probably my mistake, but trying to figure how how to get it work.

Thanks for your time.

I’m not sure what you are seeing or where you are seeing ‘aliases’ in WordPress.

Are you running a domain mapping or redirect plugin of some sort?

Could you provide a screenshot?

Usually, an Alias would be a domain or subdomain that either points at some other resource and either keeps its own identity or disappears once it has done its job.

Neither of my networks (multisites) has any ‘alias’ features themselves.

If you have the domain mapping plugin installed then you could probably get rid of that one. It won’t hurt anything but it isn’t necessary anymore as WordPress long ago integrated the mapping functionalities into the WordPress core.

There is no “Aliases” tab on there. No such tab exists in WordPress.

Now, you may be using some multisite domain mapping plugin. Many of those existed and still exist, and some still even work. However, they are no longer necessary for domain mapping in WordPress multisite, for the most part.

Generally speaking, you can just set the “Site Address (URL)” in the Sites->Edit screen to whatever you want it to be, and as long as the webserver is configured to send the traffic for that URL to the main index.php of the installation, the mapping will work properly. Domain and site mapping is less of an issue in WordPress than it is of configuring your hosting system to know that the traffic for a URL should map to the WordPress installation.

Thanks, however we are not using a domain mapping plugin to my knowledge, but it is on the site dashboard. (Network Admin -> Sites -> domain.tld) There is the info tab, users, themes, settings, aliases. Unless the plugin adds the tab to this page.

I can investigate more though. Thanks for your time.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by cs3029.

Yeah, that’s a plugin or addon or something, because there is the tabs you listed, but no Aliases tab there. Not by default.