Monthly Archives: June 2011

WordPress multisite in subfolder

If you install wordpress in a subfolder like /home/example/public_html/wordpress instead of the main DocumentRoot ( usually /home/example.com/public_html ) you will not be able to enable multisite functionality but with a few small changes to wordpress code you can make it work.

My goal was to have the main site ( example.com ) with multisite, host blogs on subdomains like dom1.example.com and then use domain mapping so I could map a domain like dom1.com to dom1.example.com.

Here are the steps I took:

  1. Extract wordpress-3.1.3.zip in /home/example.com/public_html/wordpress, go to went to http://example.com/wordpress and install, then login as admin to http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin
  2. In wp-admin -> Settings both WordPress address (URL) and Site address (URL) were set to http://example.com/wordpress, change Site address (URL) to http://example.com
  3. copy index.php and .htaccess from /home/example.com/public_html/wordpress to /home/example.com/public_html/
  4. open /home/example.com/public_html/index.php in an editor and changed the line:
    require('./wp-blog-header.php'); to require('./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php');
    At this point you have a working wordpress installed in a subfolder accessible at http://example.com
  5. Open wp-config.php and insert the following lines at the top ( can be right after the first line )
    define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);
  6. Open the file wordpress/wp-admin/network.php in a text editor, look for the line: "function network_step1" and a few lines bellow there should be a line:
    1. span style="color: #ff0000;">'siteurl''home' ) ) {

    , replace it with

    1. span style="color: #ff0000;">'siteurl''home' ) ) {
  7. Now go to http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/network.php and create your network.
  8. After you create the network, WordPress will ask you to add a few lines to wp-config.php but you'll have to modify them a bit. Here's what I added:
    1. span style="color: #ff0000;">'MULTISITE''SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL'// default was false
    2. '/'; // default was /wordpress/
    3. 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'example.com''PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/wordpress''SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE''BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );

    By default SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL was set to false but you want subdomains, and $base was set to "/wordpress" but this needs to be "/"

    Don't forget to also add the required lines to .htaccess ( the one in the wordpress/ directory )

  9. After the network was created, wordpress messed up a bit with the permalink settings for the main domain. Before, the permalink structure was set to: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ and wordpress changed it to /blog/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/.
    But after I added the above lines to wp-config.php I was able to change the permalink structure back to what it was from Settings->Permalinks
  10. Adding domains

    Go to Network admin ( http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/network/ ) -> Sites -> Add new . I added
    an example domain dom1.example.com. This is what I'll use as an example from now on.

    After I added the domain I went to Sites , clicked the Edit link bellow the domain and changed Path from / to /wordpress ( with the option "Update siteurl and home as well" checked ) then go to the Settings tab and change the Home to http://dom1.example.com/
    At this point you have a working wordpress installed in a subfolder with multisite configured with subdomains.

  11. Install the domain mapping plugin with my changes
    1. span style="color: #ff0000;">'SUNRISE', 'on' );

    right after the first line

  12. got to Network Admin -> Tools -> Domain Mapping to configure the plugin and add the mappings
  13. Come back and let me know how it worked in the comments

WpMU Domain mapping in subfolder install

Here's a solution to run a wordpress multisite installation with domain mapping even if you didn't install wordpress in the DocumentRoot of your site.

If you want to map domains to subdomains in your wordpress install for example womsend.ro to ro.womsend.com you would use the wordpress-mu-domain-mapping plugin but this only works if wordpress is installed dirrectly in the web site's document root not in a subdirectory.

I like to have wordpress installed in a subdirectory because it keeps things organized especially if I have other things installed on your site.

So here is a patch to the wordpress domain mapping plugin that allows it to work with the subdirectory install. Download the original plugin then apply the patch (this patch is for the 0.5.4 version of the plugin):
[download id="26"]

Or just download the plugin already patched for convenience:
[download id="27"]

After adding a new site you have to go to Network Admin -> Sites, select the site and edit some of it's configuration values ( wordpress default values will not work ):

1) In site Info Tab, the Path is set to "/" . You have to add the subdirectory to it. For example if your site's document root is /home/site/public_html and wordpress is installed in /home/site/public_html/wordpress then the Path should be set to /wordpress
2) After saving the changes at #1, in the site Settings tab , Siteurl should already be set to http://{SubDomain}{Path} where {Path} is the path set at #1, but if it's not then set it.
3) The changes at #1 also modified ( in wp 3.1.3 anyway ) the "Home" value in the Settings tab , adding the Path to it but this has to be clean of the path so you have to change it back to http://{SubDomain}/

That's it, let me know how it works in the comments.