Web hosting wordpress multi site domain mapping
On this page: This tutorial will help you add new sites to your WordPress Multisite install and map a custom domain to the new site. This will give you the ability to create multiple instances of WordPress sites under one parent WordPress install.
Updated: March 29th, 2017
The most powerful feature of WordPress Multisite is the ability to have multiple sites under one parent WordPress install. This tutorial will help you add new sites to your WordPress Multisite install and map a custom domain to the new site.
The first step is to add your new domain to the User Portal. For more information on how to do this, please visit “Add Domain in User Portal ”. If you’re using a subdomain, and plan to use several more, our support staff can enable domain wildcarding for your account, which will prevent the need to add each subdomain to the domains list.
Once you have added the new domain to your User Portal, you will now need to create the site in your WordPress Multisite install. To do this, please follow these instructions:
- Navigate to “All Sites”. The URL is /wp-admin/network/sites.php
- Note: For example purposes, your website is domain.com
- Click “Add New” at the top. It’s next to a key-looking icon.
You’ll be taken to this screen. You will see three fields:
For Site Address, choose one word. Do *not* choose something like www.domain.com, because then it becomes www.domain.com.domain.com. A good input example would be dev or subsite2. (You can have any site address as long as it is not blog, www, or multiple words).
Site Title will be the new title of the subsite. This can be anything you would like and can be changed later.
Admin Email can be your clients email or yours. Whomever’s email is placed here will have access to the dashboard of the newly created subsite.
Once you get to the screen below, do NOT change any values.
You have successfully created a subsite on your Multisite install.
Mapping a domain to your subsite
Mapping a domain to your subsite allows you to use a different purchased domain to access a subsite on your Multisite network. For example, subsite.domain.com can be accessed as subsite.com.
To do this you will need to download the plugin WordPress MU Domain Mapping .
You will need to “Network Activate” the plugin, so that it’s available for all sites.
Once the plugin is “Network Activated” you will need to do some additional setup to ensure proper functionality of the plugin. There are two steps you need to take, the first is to add the following line to your wp-config.php file.
define( 'SUNRISE', 'on' );
The second step is to access the /wp-content/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/ folder through SFTP. In there, you’ll see a file called. sunrise.php. move this into the /wp-content/ directory.
Other steps are typically required but we manage the rest through our platform.
Once the plugin setup is completed, navigate to the Domains page. Here is the URL path associated with it:
/wp-admin/network/settings.php?page=dm_domains_admin
Ignore the section “Search Domains” and focus on “New Domain”.
First you’ll need to find the Site ID for the site we just created. This is easily done by going to the “All Sites” screen and locating the number under the “ID” column.
Take note of the Site ID and place it in the Site ID textbox on the Domain Mapping page.
Add your domain that you want associated with the subsite, keep the Primary textbox checked, and click Save.
You should then see something similar to this at the bottom this:
You have now successfully “Domain Mapped” your newly created subsite. This process automatically adds your new Mapped Domain to the WP Engine User Portal, to be used by your site.
Article Quick Tips
Only a "Super Admin" of a Multisite will be able to make these types of changes.
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