We have the WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin installed and have followed instructions to the best of our ability but we can’t seem to get this working at all and I’ve tried everywhere to get advice but no-one seems to know anything about it…
Here’s the scenario.
We have WordPress MU installed at (eg) abc.com so each new WordPress site we create is then at (eg) site1.abc.com, site2.abc.com, site3.abc.com etc. These are all virtual sub directories and WordPress MU does not generate any physical sub directories for site1, site2 and site3.
What we wish to do, is purchase new domain names and map them to each one of these sub WordPress sites. (eg) mynewsite1domain.com will be mapped to site1.abc.com so instead of the site appearing as the following in the visitors browser address bar…
site1.abc.com
site1.abc.com/about
site1.abc.com/contact
…the URL’s would appear as…
mynewsite1domain.com
mynewsite1domain.com/about
mynewsite1domain.com/contact
This particular setup is on a VPS running Plesk CPanel, I have complete access to everything including SSH if anyone can advise how on earth this setup is meant to be correctly configured to function as explained above.
I’m guessing something needs to be done with DNS records, at the domain registrar for mynewsite1domain.com, we have the name servers pointing to the VPS IP that the WordPress MU setup resides on.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Are you using WordPress Multisite 3.3.X or an older implementation of WordPress MU (or the MU plugin from a third party)? Likewise, to accomplish domain mapping, are you using the official domain mapping plugin from Automattic or another third party implementation? It sounds like you are using subdirectory vs subdomain multisite. That is not how domain mapping is typically used (the Automattic version at least).
You shouldn’t have to point the new domain names to the server’s DNS (unless you want it to be the authority), you’ll just need to assure that the new domain names resolve to the same IP address of the main web server (an A record should suffice). The domain mapping plugin is pretty straight forward on how to map what domain name to what subdomain and whether you wish to have it redirect or use the new domain name in the address bar. The later would give you what you seek with mysite1domain.com/subfolder, etc.