WordPress 3 now includes the features that were previously available as WordPress MU. “MU” stands for Multi-User (or Multi-Site) and this lets you to run multiple blogs all from a single WordPress installation. This walk-through will help you configure WordPress to manage multiple sites, each with their own second-level domain (SLD).
As you go through this walk-through, it helps to understand that WordPress MU was originally designed to create a branded, automated community of blogs using sub-domains (i.e. third-level domains) such as user1.wordpress.com, user2.wordpress.com, etc. You can sign up on wordpress.com right now and get your own instant blog, hosted on their servers. You become a part of the wordpress.com community. WordPress MU was designed to allow you to create your own communities under your own domain name branding.
This walk-through addresses a slightly different type of user which is perhaps a server admin or simply a person who runs several blogs. There is no “community” and you don’t allow anonymous users to stop by and create a blog. You might currently have WordPress installations on multiple servers with totally unrelated domains. Keeping the code and plugins updated for multiple blogs gets to be a hassle, so the idea of a single, centralized WordPress install is appealing for maintenance reasons. Thanks to WordPress’s flexible architecture you can do this, but it’s not part of the original design.
The reason I write all of this is to hopefully explain why SLDs are outside the scope of WordPress’s original design. You can still set it up without understanding any of this, however it will make things easier if you know how the pieces fit together.
Requirements
To keep this simple I’m only going to write about the multi-site configuration. I’m assuming you know how to install WordPress, edit config files on your server, create a MySQL database on your host and map sub-domains. These things may be done differently depending on your host so you will need to do the research for your own host server. If you run your own server you may have to know how to configure it for multiple domains as well.
DNS Configuration
Again, I’m not going to get into DNS configuration. However, I will say that a simple setup is to simply point all of your domains to the same IP address and let WordPress do the rest. You can also assign one domain an IP and then park each additional domain onto this one, which may save hosting fees. WordPress relies on the hostname, so it doesn’t matter how you’ve configured Apache or IP addresses, so long as the domain maps to the physical location of your WordPress install.
As a handy tip – you can edit your local hosts file to point a domain to the IP of your WordPress installation and WordPress will install easily this way. This is a great way to experiment and migrate over an existing site without taking the domain name offline. If you don’t understand what this means, then don’t worry about it!
1. Install WordPress
Install using all defaults is fine. You should install this onto the domain that you plan to use as your “master” domain. My recommendation is to install it at the top level of your domain, for example “domain.com” (without the “www” prefix). If you plan to use sub-domains for different sites then this will keep things simple. You can always add “www” during site configuration, but you can’t remove it from your sub-domain sites if it was installed that way. For example your sites will look like this: site1.www.domain.com instead of simply site1.domain.com.
Verify that WordPress is running but don’t bother putting any content in at this point. In the next few steps we’re going to enable new menu items one after the next that are necessary to use the multi-site feature.
2.Enable the WordPress Multi-Site Feature
Assuming WordPress is running, edit wp-config.php and add the following line:
define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);
After you add this line and save the file, return to the WordPress Admin page and look for a new menu item Tools->Network. (If on 3.1 then instead you will see a new link next to the Logout link called “Network Admin” and from there go to Settings -> Network Setup) Navigate to this new menu and you’ll be prompted to “Create a Network” in order to enable the multi-site feature.
You have some choices as to whether you want to use sub-domains or sub-folders for your network. Leave all the defaults and choose sub-domains. We’re going to be using separate SLDs anyway so choosing sub-domains seems to make more sense to me. If you choose folders, you’ll be on your own from this point forward.
Once you enable the network, you will be given configuration text that you must copy and paste into an .htaccess file and some additional variables to be pasted into wp-config.php. Do this as directed on the Network page.
In WordPress 3.0 – after you edit these files and re-login you should see another new menu “Super Admin” which is above the dashboard menu. Your site is now ready for multiple sites.
In WordPress 3.1 The Super Admin menu has been replaced with a separate “Network Admin” screen which you use instead of the “Super Admin” menu. The link to this is located in the upper-right part of the screen next to the “Log Out” link. This link will let you toggle in/out of network admin mode.
3. Install Plugin WordPress MU Domain Mapping
At this point your server is already setup to handle multiple sites, but we need to install a plugin in order to support SLDs. The plugin to use is called “wordpress-mu-domain-mapping“ This plugin also includes a special file known as a “drop-in” which must be manually copied and hooks into the lower levels of the WordPress API.
You can install this plugin by manually uploading it, or through “Plugins->Add New.” Just make sure
you install version .052 or higher. After you have installed it, go ahead and activate the plugin. You’ll notice that plugins now have an option to “Network Activate” which activates a plugin for all sites.
Once the plugin is installed, you need to manually install the Sunrise “drop-in” which is included with the plugin source files. You may either copy sunrise.php from /wp-content/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/ to /wp-content/ or if you prefer you can create a symbolic link (for example ln -s plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/sunrise.php. I prefer the link myself).
Once you’ve copied or linked the file, you have to edit wp-config.php one last time and add the following line which will tell WordPress to activate the drop-in:
define( 'SUNRISE', 'on' );
Once you re-load the console you’ll once again have some new menu items. This time they appear under the Super Admin (Network Admin in 3.1 or higher) menu and they are Domain Mapping and Domains. The Domain Mapping has some settings that don’t actually need to be changed. The Domains page is where we’ll map SLDs to a site (in the next step).
4. Create a Second Site
At this point your server is fully ready to support SLD sites, you just need to know how to add them. The basic concept is that you create a site first using WordPress’s normal functionality. Then you using the domain mapping plugin to map the SLD to the new site based on it’s Id. Because WordPress doesn’t yet natively support SLDs, you have to do a little fudging with the forms.
First, under Super Admin (or Network Admin) go to the Sites page. It is slightly confusing because you have to choose a sub-domain for your site, even though we’re going to use a SLD. That’s ok, just enter whatever you want as the sub-domain and add the site.
Now that you’ve added the site, you can click “Edit” under the new site and this will bring up a long page with lots of settings. Don’t worry about changing everything right now but you do want to change these two fields: Domain and Fileupload URL. These need to be changed to your new SLD:
At some point once WordPress natively supports SLDs you would probably be done at this point. In fact you will be able to visit your new site if your domain is already configured, but you won’t be able to log into the admin panel for the site. So we need to map the domain over to the new site.
Before you leave the Sites page, make a note of the ID of your new site. (In the screenshot above, my site “whatever” has the ID of “8″). If it’s a new install, then your ID will probably be “2″.
Head to the Super Admin -> Domains page (in 3.1 this is Network Admin -> Settings -> Domains) and there is a form at the bottom to add a new Domain. Leave the Primary checkbox checked. Enter your site ID from above and the domain. Click Save to add the mapping.
At this point you’re done and you should be able visit your site using your SLD as well as login to the admin panel. I hope this tutorial worked for you and helped you to understand how WordPress MU feature works as well as some of it’s current shortcomings.
Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions to make this walk-through easier.
Hi, thanks for this tutorial. I have got it working almost perfect.
Is it possible to add domain names with www. in front of them. I always prefer www. for search engine ranking etc.
Stu
I don’t think there is any problem using www in front of the domains, you just have to enter it that way in both the “Sites” and “Domains” configuration.
In the domains you can also create multiple domains that will go to the same site, so you can add “domain.com” and “www.domain.com” both pointing to one site Id. That is where the “primary” checkbox comes into play. I haven’t played around with that too much yet, but I’m pretty sure that’s the way it works.
Hi, thanks for the reply. Yes what I found was that by setting the “master” site to www then the other sites would default to this. I did find the domains section where you can create multiples for both with and without the www.
I generally prefer for my sites to show with www’s in them and to have a redirect to always go there for search engine reasons. It is always good though to have the redirect for people typing your domain in manually as most people now don’t insert the www before a domain name.
Stu I’m curious what your “search engine reasons” are for wanting www. Its pretty much common knowledge that it make no difference to Google whether you have www or not. So why do you prefer it?
Hello,
I’m just wondering if the sub-directories are http://mysite.com/site1 we can still direct the site to its actual main domain, correct? cuz all my sites have their own domains. so even if the multi-site was set up with mysite.com , i can get my site1 on its own domain at http://site1.com
just want to clarify before i go ahead with this. its an amazing feature and i love how you’ve created a complete step by
Okie, I actually followed everything step by step and it seemed to have created a new network. However, I can’t seem to get my site to show up. I pulled in http://poetry.saanamsmind.com to the network by creating the site http://saanamsmind.com/poetry but I get an error page at http://saanamsmind.com
Help?
thanks a bunch!
@U I can’t say for sure, it looks like you’re maybe setting up the site for both “folder” sites and “sub-domain” sites at the same time. As far as I know wordpress will only support one configuration for the system.
I think if you plan to use TLDs, then the sub-domain network is the easier approach. I’m not really an expert at all configurations, though.
to Install WordPress 3 with Multiple TLDs, which server must i have ? Is this server ok ? : https://www.ovh.com/fr/produits/superplan_ssd.xml
thx
Every host is different so it’s hard to say but it has to support PHP, MySQL and DNS mapping multiple domains to the same site. If it can do those things it should support it.
My personal recommendation is pair.com, I have been using them for years, very reliable.
I have problems installing this on my website. I made all the steps but no subdomains instalation. I can see the subdomain created but it seems that no instalation was made.
tuntatiiculinare.studiolife.ro
@Luminita It sounds like you might need to look into the DNS setting of your host to make sure the sub-domains are configured or else you can use a wild-card DNS for all sub-domains.
Thanks for this tutorial, it was exactly what I was looking for. I had been running WP 3.0 since the beta version and hadn’t been able to figure out the multiple domain issue. Thanks to your post, I have the network running perfectly.
@OSLiving awesome!
Thanks for this post. I changed the wp-admin file by adding the line given. However, when logging off and restarting WP I still do not see the Network link in the tools menu.
Would potential factors include that I’m running an existing installation (WP 3.1) or my using a theme other than default (which I can’t imagine why
?
Thanks for your help!
@Jerry – hmm, I don’t have an answer for that except perhaps just double-check that you did all the steps and there were no typos in any of the variables.
If you copy-pasted any code from this article, check that apostrophes haven’t been wp-texturized. I copy-pasted “define(‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true);” and realized that the apostrophes had been converted to a quotation pair.
@Jedidiah thanks – good point. I just added some tags to the page to make them hopefully easier to copy/paste, but definitely watch out for the “smart quotes” when you copy/paste.
You can’t switch over an existing installation. In order to have a WPMU installation you have to set it all up WHEN you install it.
Is there any way to use a different IP for each of the mapped domain (residing on the same server)?
Thanks
@Nigel – yes, that is how I have several of my sites set up. The configuration for that is with your host’s DNS setup. All hosts are different so you can just check with your own host and tell them that you want to point two IP addresses at the same physical server location.
Some hosts may not support that. I use pair.com and they allow you to set the “home” folder for each IP address wherever you want. So I just map them all to the same wordpress folder.
can you manage( add and create content) for each of your websites from the same admin?
@mp, yes you can assign multiple blogs to the same account. you do have to re-login sometimes when you go between domains but it is the same account.
Jason, as you use pair can you give me some advice. I’ve added additional sites to my pair account with dedicated ips’. Do I point these to my root installation folder for wordpress.
Also, I’m using the sub directory install. and have this is wp-confiig.
define( ‘SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL’, false );
I’ve done this as I’m mapping to a domain not a sub domain.
@Ian I have a mix of dedicated IP address as well as parked domains. They both work exactly the same, however the parked domain is cheaper on pair so you save yourself a few bucks that way. Basically you’re only using the DNS mapping so it really doesn’t matter how you do it – the domain just needs to point to the wordpress install location.
i only still have my dedicated IP addresses because I’m too lazy to change them and I’ve already paid for 12 months!
Hello,
I can’t understand why you would go to all this trouble just to be able to run several sites on one WordPress installation.
I just dynamically set the $table_prefix in wp_config.php and then all is done. Please let me know of any advantages of using WordPress MU Domain Mapping. I must be missing something.
My tutorial: http://www.dnoutline.com/one-wordpress-codebase-many-websites/
/br Johan
@Johan – it does look like a lot when written out here, but I don’t find the MU setup to be all that much trouble. I have to admit that your solution does look interesting, but I probably would not do it simply because I’m happy with my MU setup and yours isn’t an officially tested configuration. I wouldn’t know what type of issues (if any) you would run into. I can see perhaps some plugins or caching might have conflicts, but then again maybe there are no problems at all…? What MU gives you is the unified user management, unified site configuration utilities, and the community features for automatically creating new blogs. If you don’t need those things and everything is working fine for you as you have it, then I would only say that shows how flexible wordpress is for all types of installations.
Just completed the process. Worked great. This is going to be so useful when I want to create new sites using all my favorite plugins. Thanks.
I have had this up and running for a month or so with multiple sites and domain names. I need to change the domain name of one of the sites but I can’t figure out how to make it work, at least not easily.
Do you know of a simple way to do this?
The title is somewhat misleading: a top-level domain is
.com, .eu, .us, .de etc. While example.com, example.eu, example.us,
example.de are all second-level domains. I found your article
(which is indeed helpful) while looking for a solution to make one
WP network work this way: example.com/blog – blog in English
example.ru/blog – blog in Russian That is indeed a “multiple TLD”
issue
@Dae you are correct, I changed “TLD” to SLD, Second Level Domain. Thanks!
Hi,
Thanks for the tutorial. I tried to follow the directions, but at the end of it all, when i go to one of the sub-domains, I just get an index page with a couple of folders. Do I need to install wordpress again in the sub-domains?
Thanks,
Ayaz
@Ayez – it sounds like you may have a problem with your server’s DNS or domain mapping. If it were a WordPress issue you would at least get an error page or it would just show your default blog
Hi Jason, thank you so much for your tutorial, it worked perfectly to add the mapping mode to “external domains”.
(masterdomain.com – otherdomain.com).
I can access the wp-admin of the external domain via superadmin, but that’s it.
I can’t activate the plugins nor the themes to the other external domains. I tried the network activation, and also added “plugin commander” and “plugin premium package manager for networks”. Nothing.
Do you know why the external domain is not 100% linked to the superadmin site?
Thanks.
@magoo, unfortunately nothing obvious comes to mind from what you posted. if you figure it out, please post back.
I am having the same problem. If I log out of a blog and try to access the Dashboard from the main website it doesn’t work. Can’t network activate plugins or themes. I also noticed that the wp-content/blog.dir is empty.
I’m still not clear if the new Network feature allows me to install a single version of wordpress and use it for multiple, totally unrelated domain names for different business websites. If that can be done, where do the themes need to be installed, as each website/business is using a different theme?
Yes that is exactly what this tutorial will help you do. I run various sites for people that are totally unrelated to each other and have their own unique themes, users, etc.
once you have the MU capabilities setup there is a higher level of administration referred to as “Network Admin” where you can install the themes and plugins that will be available for all sites on the server. Then within the normal “Site Admin” of each site you choose the appropriate theme, enable the appropriate plugins, etc.
Jason, I really really really appreciate this tutorial. It worked!!! I checked out some other related Multisite tutorials, however, I didn’t seem to completely understand the process. This explained it clearly and step by step. Thank you so much!
I tried the tutorial but im having problem on the Super Admin Menu doesnt show on the menu, im using WP v3.1
Thanks in advance
Sir, i got it thanks…
Hello,
We’ve wordpress-mu setup,
Now we need 4 different domains to be managed under same super-admin.
domains are having different IP, DNS and they aren’t subdomain.
Hence, we need abc.com , xyz.com,pqr.com, mnop.com ‘s wordpress articles to be managed under same superamdin.
Can you pls advise steps for the same?
I tried above instructions but it only works for subdomain1.abc.com or abc.com/subdomain1 .
WordPress doesn’t support that by default, that is the reason for the WordPress MU Domain Mapping Plugin which handles the unique domain mapping.
Thank you Jason for a reply.
Could you pls inform how WordPress MU Domain Mapping Plugin works with multiple parked domains?
PS: Not subdomain.
we need abc.com , xyz.com,pqr.com, mnop.com ‘s wordpress articles to be managed under same superadmin.
Well it may depend on how your host provider treats “parked” domains. Mine (pair.com) basically allows me to park a domain on another domain. So I have http://www.domain1.com which is a full-fledged site with a static IP and wordpress MU installed. Then http://www.domain2.com is “parked” onto http://www.domain1.com.
When the user hits http://www.domain2.com it is detected by WordPress as a different domain (assuming you have the Domain Mapping plugin configured). Basically it is just a way to add more sites cheaply (on my host at least).
Hi There,
I tried to enable the multisite function in WordPress 3.2.1 but couldn’t find the Super Admin or Network Setup thing. Are there any changes for 3.2.1?
By the way, I already editted my wp-config.php.
Thanks!
In 3.2 the network admin is accessed in the upper-right corner. You click where it says “Howdy, Name” and a dropdown will appear with “Network Admin” as one of the choices
is it possible to site from different domain …… i mean other than subdomain and sub directory
Yes that is the purpose of this article. However you have to initially create the site with a sub-domain or sub-folder simply due to the way WordPress currently works.. Once the site is created you can then map it a unique domain name.
when i create for multidomain they tell me to change wp.config.php i did that but when i uplodad .htaccess file as instruction it shows server error in admin and all this thing i am doing locally on localhost but after .htacess file it shows an error
That could be a typo in .htaccess or one of the directives isn’t supported on your host servers. If you have access to the error logs that should tell you otherwise you probably have to contact your host provider.
Thanks for this tutorial. I believe that I am having some sort of issue with redirects right now. I can get SLDs setup and working, but I cannot access the dashboard for anything except my original WordPress instance.
When I try to click on “Dashboard” for the SLD site, I get the login screen and enter my SuperAdmin credential. But when I press Log In nothing happens, I just sit there in an endless loop, never able to get inside the new SLD dashboard.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
Hi Jonathan
Did you ever get your issue resolved? I am having the same issue and although I followed the article, it’s still not working.
Thanks
FANTASTIC! This is exactlty what I needed! …and it perfectly works! Thank you
Hi !
Thanks for sharing this information. This has helped me to understand WordPress3.0 in better way.
Regards
Onkar Kubal
Thanks for this article. Unfortunately I’m still having issues – wonder if you or someone else may be able to help me.
I have the main blog site setup using a subdomain like this: main-site.domain.com and I want other sites to be second-site.domain.com, other-site.domain.com – is this possible?
I have main-site.domain.com working fine with MU installed. But when I create second-site.domain.com – that’s when I start getting issues.
I cannot access the dashboard for any of the other sites, just main-site.domain.com.
If I navigate to second-site.domain.com it works, but I cannot access the dashboard. I put in my login credentials and it just refreshes the page – no errors shown with debug on. If I use incorrect login credentials I get the ‘shake’ error.
Thanks in advance.
i m install to wordpress in domain.atlist no idea to which type to install wordpress in domain
Hey Jason,
Thanks a lot for the tutorial. There are other tutorials available elsewhere. But you included one ‘simple’ point that others assumed that everyone will know and omitted.
The point was to tick the ‘primary’ check box when mapping a domain. So simple and dumb.. I should have probably known this. But i did not, and you are the only one who told me.
Thanks a lot!
great tutorial – success in first attempt
thank you
Excellent tutorial, worked on the first try. Is there any way to allow users to sign up and create a new blog automatically, using the subdomain method?
Hi,
I’ve done all and dashboard for my subsite is working but not the public side, it’s just empty..
please update this tutorial. They have updated everything and now something I did a 100 times is completely different and confusing.