New to the community? Start here

Multisite Installation Problems with Subdomains

I have setup brandonfire.hosting as a mulisite and it appear to work properly except for a few issues. Please note that I have set up this multisite as an “addon domain” and not the primary domain in my cPanel. It is NOT set up as a subdomain or even in a directory.

1. When I create a new site the username does not appear to be valid.

2. For some reason it’s showing the Branding from the WPMU Branding plugin on my login page from the main site on the cPanel on all login pages for sites created in my network.

3. I created a site called test.brandonfire.hosting, and that just redirects to the primary domain on the cPanel.

4. I created a site called brandonstestsite.brandonfire.hosting and it also redirects to the primary domain.

I have wildcard subdomains set up properly. Is this problem happening because the multisite network is on an “addon domain” and I have set it up to use subdomains instead of subfolders for new sites in the network?

Thank you!!

Thu, 24 Nov 2016 13:36:06
  • Jude
    • DEV MAN

    Hey Brandon

    Hope all is well with you and you are keeping fine !

    Looks like either the .htaccess or the wp config file is a bit off. Can you compare your htaccess to the one here and see if it matches ? If not replace the one you have with the one here

    https://codex.wordpress.org/htaccess#Multisite

    Next see if the following lines are in your .htaccess 

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

    AND

    define('MULTISITE', true);
    
define('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true);

    Thank you for being a WPMU DEV member and have a fantastic day !

    Cheers

    Jude

  • Brandon
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    Yes, confirmed all of this is there. I had to add this section below, but it’s still not working and now with the addition of this code I am getting error 500 on the site:

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

    Now it looks like this:

    # BEGIN WordPress
    
RewriteEngine On
    
RewriteBase /
    
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
    

    
# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
    
RewriteRule ^wp-admin$ wp-admin/ [R=301,L]
    

    
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
    
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
    
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
    
RewriteRule ^(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $1 [L]
    
RewriteRule ^(.*.php)$ $1 [L]
    
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
    
/* Multisite */
    
define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true );
    
define('MULTISITE', true);
    
define('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true);
    
# END WordPress

  • Jude
    • DEV MAN

    Hmm .. I need to peep in to be sure of the cause. Can you please send in

    Subject: “Attn: Jude “

    – WordPress super admin/ admin username + password

    – FTP credentials (host/username/password)

    – cPanel details

    – link back to this thread for reference

    Select “I have a different question” for your topic – this and the subject line ensure that it gets assigned to me :slight_smile:

    https://wpmudev.com/contact/

  • Ash
    • Code Norris

    Hello Brandon

    Thanks for sending details. I have checked the site, reconfigured wildcard (there is an issue that it was pointed to DOMAIN.design but it should point to DOMAIN.hosting which is your main site).

    But, unluckily still subsites are not working. I am guessing another issue here. When I visit your subsite, it forces to use SSL and shows a privacy error as the certificate is not valid. If I ignore the error and proceed, then it redirects to DOMAIN.design site.

    So, I assume, this could be a configuration issue. Even when I deleted wildcard subdomain, it was still redirected to DOMAIN.design site. Would you please talk to your host about this if they got any clue? Or possible to disable SSL temporarily (disable all the configuration that was done for setting up SSL)?

    Please note that, using as an addon domain should not be any issue at all. I have configured my test sites hundred times in the same way you did :slight_smile:

    Please let us know what you hear back from them. Have a good day!

    Cheers

    Ash

  • Brandon
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    The hosting company has no idea what’s causing this. I’ve also attempted to disable the following plugins on both sites:

    W3 Total Cache

    All-in-One WordPress Security Plugin

    I disabled this plugin on the primary domain and don’t have SSL set up yet on the multisite install.

    Really Simple SSL (fully attempted to disable SSL on the primary domain)

    What could be causing this? It’s all set up properly, and the host is asking for more details about you think could be wrong with the configuration?

    Does the .htaccess file of the primary domain have to also be set up with multisite?

    The host thinks it could be that the addon domain is in the “path” of the rewrite rules coming from the primary domain’s .htaccess.

    After testing thoroughly with my host on the phone, I have now reactivated SSL on the primary domain.