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Exact clones right down to API keys.

No quick way to do a reset. Just a matter of going through and deleting things.
Once /books is done, you could install one of those maintenance plugins on the main site. Some of them allow you to put some content on the maintenance page and you could put a link to /books on there. That would buy you some time doing the main site.

The googlebot is 95% of my traffic yet I still worry about how it looks at any given monent.

That plugin is for moving a whole site, not subsite so I don’t think it would work. No screenshots and the docs are included with the plugin evidently so I can’t read them. Reviews aren’t the greatest. Remember, the main site or a single wp install has loads more database tables.

Plugins will all get deactivated when you make the change to multisite. Part of the process. They will still be there and you can network activate or activate individually. Some work better one way and some the other. Most all of your settings will remain when activating on the main site but since you want the main site to basically be at /books, then no they wouldn’t be.

The export/import feature might be the best. I have no idea how much work went into your site and was just judging based on three pages. Export/import is for content, not settings though.

From all I’ve read, there’s no real good way to migrate/duplicate content and settings from a single site to a subsite or visa versa. They’re just too different.

Speaking of different. If you installed wordpress via a one click installer on your hosting OR it was preinstalled, then this whole multisite process might give you problems as those types of installations tend to not be standard.

Hey zanzaboonda, I did find a workaround. In pmpro-network.php, I changed lines 88-91 from this

<div>
                            <p>You will be reclaiming your site <strong><?php echo $blogname;?></strong>.</p>
                            <input type="hidden" name="blog_id" value="<?php echo $blog_id;?>" />
                        </div>

to this

<div>
                            <a style="color:red;" href="<?php echo home_url(PMPRO_NETWORK_MANAGE_SITES_SLUG);?>"><?php _e('Click here to Manage your Site &raquo;') ?></a>
</div>

I also pasted the pmpron_pmpro_confirmation_message function just below that but it doesn’t do anything. It’s supposed to display the new blog with a link to the front and backend of it. The above PMPRO_NETWORK_MANAGE_SITES_SLUG is just a link to the manage-sites page, done in red to be sure they see it. The clones don’t show up in the dropdown menu “My Site” in the admin bar but they do show in Network>Sites>All Sites and can alss get there from the dropdown if you follow My Sites>Network>Sites.

The above code change is quite the hack but regardless, I’ve got it so people can pick a membership level, checkout, site gets created and the hack gives them a link to manage it. That file is the addon that creates sites and is a one file plugin that didn’t come from wp.org so no worries about updates on it unless pmpro makes a new one and we manually download and install it.

Not sure if you’re using paypal express or a gateway but I found Stripe was real easy to set up and they never have to leave the site for checkout. There’s also a new pmpro addon to add paypal express as an option to a gateway. In that case, they will leave the site and I haven’t tested it yet to see where they end up when they come back. If I can’t hack that, then I’ll put some kind of message on the pp checkout page that they’ll have to wait for an email with their site credentials which may take 1-2 business days, etc etc.
Guess I should do the pp express test today. I’m almost ready to go live.

No, you would do it in wordpress admin after you have multisite with subdomains and have created the book sibsite. Just make new pages with the same name and copy/paste the content from .com to .com/book
Looking at that theme, you might have sections and you can do the same for those. Then you can go back and delete the content from the main site or replace it with what you want to have there.
All wordpress content, with the exception of pics, gets stored in the database. The files in www just run wordpress.

Multisite plugins can be activated different ways. Network activate makes them available on all sites in the network. Or you can just install from Network>Plugins and activate one individual sites.

You’ll just work with the root of the domain until you have a subdomain set up. Then you can add a site and name it book which will give you the above address.

After that since you only have a few pages, it might be just as easy to copy and paste content from the main site to the /book subsite once it’s made, rather than doing export/import. It kind of depends on how similar the future /book site will be to what you have now.

No problem. Glad you got it worked out. Yeah, I’m not a big fan of bp sec.
Wordfence and wp spamshield rock.

Yes, you only have one set of plugins and themes with multisite and you can create a new subsite with just a couple of clicks at any time which is a handy feature. The other benefit is, you only have one set of WordPress files and one database instead of two or more. Multisite just adds a few database tables to your existing database. Keeps things smaller on hosting. Not all plugins are multisite friendly so if you have some favorites, you might want to check to see if they’re compatible. Your first stop might want to be this.
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Before_You_Create_A_Network

If it’s still something you want to do them continue with below.

NOTE* I just read that you can trick wp by changing all of your post/page dates to be less than 30 days old and then activating multisite and it will give you subfolder option as well as subdomain. So try that and it might negate steps 3 and 4 below.

What you’ll have to do is set it up as subdomain and then change it to subfolder. You’ll need to be able to access and edit the wp-congif.php and .htaccess files at the root of your site so make sure you can do that first. Would be public_html or www on your server/hosting. You would use ftp or cpanel most likely. For cpanel/file manager, you may have to turn on something to be able to see .htacces. Anything that starts with a dot is a hidden file. You might have to search your hosting’s help pages for “show hidden files in file manager” or some such. Same with your ftp program.

Here’s a reference page, https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Create_A_Network
1) Activate multisite
Open up wp-config.php and add this line above where it says /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */. If it doesn’t say that anywhere, then add the line somewhere above the first line that begins with require or include:

/* Multisite */
define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true );

2) Set Up Multisite
In admin area, go to Tools>Network Setup (this is where you would be given the choice for subdomain or subfolder on a fresh site less than 30 days old. If changing the post/page dates didn’t give you subdomain option here, just go with subdomain and follow the instructions given)
I think a lot of people get screwed up right here because most instructions aren’t clear.

# BEGIN WordPesss
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
THIS IS WHERE YOU PASTE THE HTACCESS STUFF. IN BETWEEN THE IfModule tags.
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

I think some people end up pasting over the IfModule tags. Some .htaccess files can be loaded with stuff so just look for the WordPress section.

3) Change it to Subfolder Part 1;
Now you have multisite but it’s subdomain because it was the only choice. Now we can change it. Go back to wp-config.php and change
define( ‘SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL’, true );
to
define( ‘SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL’, false );

4) Change it to Subfolder Part 2;
In network admin, go to Network>Network Setup and you’ll see the stuff to paste into your .htaccess file but it will be different now.
(You can double check/compare here. Look at posts 15 and 16. https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/will-there-be-a-fix-for-old-wordpress-installs-for-multisite-functionality)
It will be what you need for subdomain. Paste that over what you pasted in step 2) between the IfModule tags.

That’s it

Tried the minimal way of simply creating the style.css, blank but with header and it broke the layout. tried copying the full, original css into it and still broken. Got it taken care of with childify plugin but I haven’t had the chance to look and see what it did that I didn’t. I had also tried a minimal functions.php as per wp docs.

I see “pec_events” in there and it looks loke it has something to do with “php events calendar plugin? I searched wp for pec_events and it led me to https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/duplicate-column-name-organizer-for-query?replies=2
Might want to try posting on that plugin’s support forum as well. It seems like there’s a sql syntax eror with it.
I’m far from being a php or sql expert so hopefully someone with more knowledge will post here.
You might try renaming the php events plugin folder via ftp/cpanel which will manually deactivate it. WordPress might be having trouble deactivating it due to the error. If you rename the folder, it will force that and if that fixes your problem, you know it’s that plugin. If not, you can change the name back to original at some point.
You could also just delete the plugin folder and reinstall later.

Also, like I said, I’m no expert but those items being wrapped in the code tags don’t seem right.

I think the best option is to go with one of the multisite clone plugins. Multisite Clone Duplicator, Multisite Cloner, NS Cloner. I think all have settings to only make new blogs as a copy of one default blog. So you would have a sort of template or master blog to clone from and it doesn’t have to be public. You can set it to be “archived” so that people don’t see it and it doesn’t get messed with/changed. Only used for cloning.

That’s kind of a tough one because a full install of wp and the main site of a multisite wp both have a lot more database tables than a subsite. Your best bet might be to use the wordpress export/import feature under Tools menu to export your content and re-import it to the /books subsite once it’s made.
If you only plan on having the two sites, you could use a duplicator plugin to pack up your current site and create a new wp install at /books which would free up .com/ to do what you want with.
Being that it’s a fairly small site, I think the first option would do well. If your site is over 30 days old, wordpress will try to force a subdomain (books.themeditatingcat.com) network rather than subfolder so you’ll need to look into that. Subdomain is more complex to do but there are ways to go with subfolder on a 30+ day old site.

can’t help with the first post except for maybe delete the whole theme folder via ftp/cpanel and reinstall a clean version. (ya, that means starting over with customizations but it might be those customizations that are causing it) Could also just rename/move it instead of delete.

For the social spam thing though.
wordfence
wpspamshield
social connect

With the first two, no more spam, don’t need honeypots, captcha, recaptcha, email confirmation. None of it. wpsamshield also comes with a basic contact form that has a button on the editor toolbar for adding it to a post/page.
SocialConnect isn’t supported anymore but works great. People would be able to log in to comment with their fb id. No filling out a form, waiting for email. It’s also one of the few social plugins that doesn’t load your admin with big ads flashing in your face to Go Pro!

Last, have a look at ultimate membership. Little more streamlined than bp but pretty much does the same thing.

Paid Membership Pro is a good one too if you want to charge for content or even for subsites. It will make a blog during checkout. Free addon scripts to for the multisite stuff. Get’s along with ult member just fine.

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/network-latest-posts/
That will show latest posts from all subsites or you can pick and choose which ones to show/exclude.
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wp-multisite-feed/
this one will do the same for your rss feed

bitnami is nice and easy but not totally standard. Keep in mind it’s one click uninstall just like it was for install.
The “root” of your server is a folder and in this case whatever folder you chose when installing bitnami. lampstack is what it defaults to on linux so maybe wampstack for mac?
Anyway, inside that folder is apps/wordpress/htdocs. htdocs is your root folder. It’s where all the wordpress files are so just put wp-config back in there, where sample came from. It’s pretty early in the game so you might want to backtrack.
Don’t get me wrong, I love bitnami but when you want to do something besides the standard one click items, it becomes a pita because it’s different and there’s not much info out there. Bitnami’s wiki is about all there is and it ain’t much.