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[Hosting] Independent Subdomains

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It would be monumentally helpful if I could run independent subdomains off of a hosting account. Unless there are some optimization and organization tricks for multisites that have completely eluded me, a multisite won’t work for my company. I REALLY want to transfer hosting to WPMU Dev and this is the only thing preventing it.

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 21:02:59
  • Jair Jaramillo
    • Staff

    Hello Eric Cooper

    Perhaps the feature you’re looking for is already available on The Hub. You can add more than one domain in the Domains page of your site’s Hub, under [Hosting -> Domains]. And these domains can be verified by adding the appropriate DNS records, which will install the SSL certificate and then you can assign these domains to any subsite of your Multisite. We have a detailed guide, here:
    https://wpmudev.com/docs/hosting/dns-and-domain-management/#multisite-domain-mapping

    Unless what you are looking to do is something different, in which case, please tell us more about what you are trying to accomplish. Perhaps we can help you.

    Kind regards,
    Jair.

  • Eric Cooper
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Thank you immensely for the hasty and thoughtful response, Jair. I was aware of the features you mentioned, and my request is slightly different. I shall do my best to explain, as it is monumentally important to me.

    Problem with Multisite: I am running around 6ish sites, most of which use completely different plugins, and all of which are medium to large in size. When I tried putting all of these sites on a multisite (one main site and 5 subdomains), everything was moving noticeably slow. When I split these sites apart, so each has it’s own separate wordpress installation, everything moves lightning fast. If there is a way to still have all of the sites lightning fast but running off of a multisite instead of separate installations, I’m open to try it; but that has proven to be a wall that is very hard to break through. Also, it is comforting having completely isolated databases and file structures for every site, which isn’t possible with a multisite (so far as I know).

    Short of that solution, my request was to allow us to host independent subdomains. So, the main site would be running one wordpress installation while the associated actual subdomains ran off of separate installations. Different files, different databases, completely isolated. In my case, one of my subdomains IS a multisite, but the main domain is not. On those lines, I am unaware of any way to create a multisite within a multisite, so that specific subdomain HAS TO be separate.

    If you can implement this, I can and will host all of my sites through you… for reasons I’ve shared many times over.

  • Jasper Alamares
    • Staff

    Hi Eric Cooper .

    Thank you for the detailed explanation.

    To make it brief, you want to host independent subdomains and you also mentioned that it has to be with different files, different databases and completely isolated from each other. As far as I am understanding it, seems what you want to do can be done by hosting different sites with separate installations as that would be the same as what you are trying to describe and achieve here. You probably know it but I would want to mention that you can host multiple Single sites with WPMU Dev as well and you are not bound to do another multisite if you don’t want that. :) :slight_smile:

    Moreover, trying to achieve this with a Multisite is impossible as far as I am aware of and as you have said it, “a wall that is very hard to break through” as the setup of a Multisite installation is to manage different subsites using the same WordPress installation for the site thus sharing the same database etc.

    For more info about creating sites with WPMU Dev as well as the different hosting plans that we have, here are some links that you can look into > https://wpmudev.com/docs/hosting/overview/#creating-a-new-site
    https://wpmudev.com/hosting/#wpmud-hg-hosting-landing-plan-price

    Please let us know if you have further clarifications regarding this matter.

    Regards,
    Jasper

  • Eric Cooper
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    I do know about domain mapping and the like, but this is different. I need to be able to host a subdomain, not a domain. I’ll just use my sites as example.

    My main site is a store, dephoro.com. Along with the main sites, there are several subdomains, like host.dephoro.com. That hosting subdomain, host.dephoro.com, is itself a multisite. So you can check out a demo site by going to host.dephoro.com/demo-1/.

    If dephoro.com were a multisite, I wouldn’t be able to use host.dephoro.com as a multisite because I can’t make a multisite within a multisite. So instead, my primary domain stands alone, while the subsites are multisites. WPMU Dev, so far as I can tell, will not let me create separate subdomains. Considering I have sites like host.dephoro.com which is a multisite and a subdomain, I can’t host my sites through WPMU Dev.

    With Bluehost I am able to host my primary domain, dephoro.com, then create and delete separate subdomains at will off of that server. I can create new IP’s and move things around, it’s a lot of freedom. The prices for your servers, going by performance matching, are higher than Bluehost’s and I can do less on them, as shown above. If you can close that gap, I’m all yours.

  • Nebu John
    • FLS

    Hi Eric Cooper ,

    Suppose you are looking forward to hosting multiple WordPress installations on a single hosting plan. In that case, I am afraid it is not possible as per the infrastructure and workflow that we follow. Please note that we provide Managed WordPress hosting with each plan isolated, compartmentalized, and using dedicated resources to ensure peak site speed and security.

    However, you can host your WordPress installation on separate plans and configure the DNS to point the sub-domains to each installation. Each hosting plan comes with different IPs, and you can point your sub-domains to different IPs.

    Please find more about how you can configure domains to point to our servers here: https://wpmudev.com/docs/hosting/dns-and-domain-management/

    Please feel free to get back to us if you need any clarification.

    Kind Regards,
    Nebu John