jasonrhodes

Did you try adding custom_fields=1 to your query parameters? So either /api/?custom_fields=1 or ?json=1&custom_fields=1 etc.

OK, I did a search on the whole db for anything containing “example.com”, and the only table I found that hadn’t been changed to “staging.example.com” in one form or another was the wp_usermeta table. Since I’m not yet logged in when I’m getting Database connection errors, I doubt this is the error, but for DUE DILIGENCE I changed my user id’s record appropriately.

The relevant piece of wp-config.php is:

/** Turning on WordPress MU, new in 3.0 */
define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', false );
define( 'MULTISITE', true );
define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false );
$base = '/';
define( 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'staging.example.com' );
define( 'PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' );
define( 'SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
define( 'BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );

and the .htaccess is straight from setting up Multisite instructions, with no absolute path references: https://pastebin.com/ZfvRJBRk

That .htaccess file sits in the /staging/ directory with the rest of the WordPress files and directories.

@andrea_r — yes I know I can contribute to Codex but I wouldn’t do that unless I was sure of what I was contributing. ??

As for the incorrect error message, that’s interesting, but I still can’t parse the tipoff of “Could not find site staging.example.com”, because that means that the database is trying to find the correct site. If that message said “Could not find site example.com”, then I’d understand that it was looking for the wrong site.

I haven’t been able to dig deep enough into the Multisite execution flow to figure out what it’s using to look for the site staging.example.com, and why it wouldn’t be finding it. :-/

OK, so to get it to work, you need to adjust your database connection settings in wp-config.php, and track down every reference of original.com in the database tables and change them to subdomain.original.com — are there more steps?

It would seem to me that running the following SQL would make all of the necessary changes:

[Code moderated as per the Forum Rules. Please use the pastebin]

Just trying to track this down and understand the problem. Thanks for anyone’s help.

Thanks, guys. I hadn’t thought of pointing the hosts file to the live site’s domain and leaving the database records as-is. For some reason that sounds too easy to work! I may try that.

I am curious, though, why it shouldn’t work on a subdomain? And for the life of me I can’t figure out why that would mean that it couldn’t connect to the database, considering the database connection details don’t change no matter what subdomain or subdirectory I’m in.

If the answer to this is “WP Multisite can’t handle what you’re trying to do”, I’d like to pursue contributing to the Codex to make that clear — but only if that’s really true.

Hi Andrea_r, thanks for your note.

I’ve read through every database table and done several find and replace functions. Anywhere that used to reference example.com now references staging.example.com, so far as the main site/blog is concerned. So all of the tables without numbers in them, that is.

I spent a day trying to set the site up on localhost and had a lot more problems with that than I’m having with this setup.

When you say “a full TLD”, what do you mean — and also, what do you mean by a fake domain?

Thanks very much for your help.

By the way, the WP_User object that is being passed back has the “administrator” role with a user_level of 10, so it’s not permissions (I don’t think).

All I can tell, at this point, is that this is typically a proxy error. I have my site situated so that it bypasses the main proxy server, so I can avoid caching while the site is in development.

Because of that, I think, I am getting the exact error you all are talking about in several places throughout the admin section.