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Setting up multiple domains

Hello,

Need some help setting up multiple domain site. My client has 4 websites with 4 separate domains and he needs 1 admin panel so all are easily maintained. Going through what your company offers, I believe I may be able to accomplish this.

I’ve got the multisite install working just fine. I’ve tried going through your documentation (on Domain Mapping and Multi-Domains) to find how to set this up and am a little baffled.

If I could get some help configuring the first one, I’m sure I can get the rest.

Client has the following domains:

royalice.com

eroyalcoffee.com

royalhousecoffee.com

spm-ice.us

Thanks,

Randall

Mon, 22 Jan 2018 3:06:12
  • Adam
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello Randall,

    I hope you’re well today and thank you for your question!

    If these are four separate sites on different domains, the Domain Mapping would be the plugin you want. The difference between the Domain Mapping and Multi-Domains is quite significant:

    Domain Mapping

    This plugin is for giving a site on Multisite its own domain. For example: original site is at “racing. cars.com” and another one is at “vintage.cars.com” where “cars.com” is the main domain of Multisite (where the main site of it resides). With Domain Mapping “racing.cars.com” can become e.g “fastcars.net” and “vintage.cars.com” can be e.g. “oldtimers.org”. So basically, you just give a sub-site that’s normally a sub-domain or sub-folder of your main domain, its own TLD domain.

    Multi-Domain

    This doesn’t give any site of your network it’s own TLD domain. Instead in only allows users to select upon signup under which domain their sub-domain should be created. So, you can e.g. have cars.com, fastcars.net and oldtimers.org but they won’t point to any particular sites of your Multisite (except cars.com being the main site). Instead, you will be able to create sub-sites on selected domain, for example: my.cars.com, best.fastcars.net, buy.oldtimers.org and so on.

    That said, if I correctly understand your goal, the Domain Mapping would be the right one here :slight_smile:

    Assuming that you already have a Multisite properly functioning and you have those sites migrated to it, those sites would be sub-sites of your mutlisite.

    After the Domain Mapping plugin is installed, you need to make sure that the file named “sunrise.php” is moved (moved, not copied) from Domain Mapping plugin folder to the /wp-content folder of your WP install and that you got this line added to the “wp-config.php” file:

    define( 'SUNRISE', 'on' );

    Then network-activate the Domain Mapping plugin. That’s pretty much it if it comes to the essential setup. The next step is to map those domains.

    Let’s focus at the royalice.com as an example (the process is the same for any other domain, it’s “replicable). Assuming that you already created a site on multisite for it, it would be e.g. royalice.yoursite.com, right? You have moved the content etc so you only need to add (map) the domain to it.

    There’s a couple of ways to do it. The easiest way is if you have a dedicated IP for yoursite.com and that IP is

    a) is used with this domain only

    b) is set in a way that literally typing it into a browser address bar actually opens the yoursite.com (main site of your Multisiate).

    The latter one can be achieved by setting “document root” (otherwise known also as “root folder”:wink: for an IP to point to your multisite WordPress installation.

    The next step in that case would be to simply:

    1) edit DNS for royalice.com domain and and set DNS A record to point to that IP

    2) once DNS is propagated, go to royalice.yoursite.com dashboard and add “royalice.com” on “Tools -> Domain Mapping” page. That’s all :slight_smile: Plugin would take care of the rest.

    These two steps can be replicated for any sub-site of your Multisite and any other domain.

    The other case is if you do not have dedicated IP or it cannot be configured properly (as described above). In that case, the simplest way is to go by add-on domains.

    Steps here are:

    1) set nameservers of royalice.com domain to the nameservers of your server (where you host your multisite)

    2) add royalice.com as an add-on domain to your server (usually via cPanel)

    3) set “root folder” for royalice.com add-on domain in your cPanel to be exactly the same as the root folder of yoursite.com (your main domain); in other words, the root folder of that add-on domain must point to your multisite WP installation.

    4) again, in royalice.yoursite.com dashboard, add “royalice.com” on “Tools -> Domain Mapping” page.

    Again, these steps can be repeated for any sub-site of your site and any domain.

    I hope that helps but if I missed anything or you got any additional questions, just let me know please.

    Best regards,

    Adam