Tutorial mini: WordPress Multisite Network With Multiple Domains – Prepare Your Network for Multiple Domain Handling

WordPress dashboard interface (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once you’ve got WordPress Multisite setup, your next step is to install the WPMU DEV Multi Domains Plugin and the WPMU DEV Domain Mapping Plugin. These plugins will allow your users to map secondary installations of WordPress to their own domains. All they’ll need to do is point their DNS towards the IP address where your WordPress network is being hosted. More on that in a moment.

In order to set up and configure the domain mapping you’ll need to access the plugin options from your network admin dashboard. If you try to access them from the dashboard of the main site or a secondary site, you won’t be able to set it up.

So go to the “Network admin” option in your WordPress dashboard and look under “Settings” for the “domain mapping” option.

Unfortunately, the instructions on this screen are confusing and inaccurate, and you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to follow them to set up your domain mapping plugin. So let’s lay out exactly what you need to do to finish your installation up.

The first step reads like this:

Please copy the sunrise.php to /home/coach/public_html/wp-content/sunrise.php and uncomment the SUNRISE setting in the /home/coach/public_html/wp-config.php file.

The “sunrise.php” isn’t actually under your root folder as it says in these instructions. It’s under the folder for the “domain-mapping” plugin which you’ll find under “wp-content” directory which is in the root directory where your WordPress installation.

Copy and paste ALL the code from the “sunrise.php” into your “wp-config.php” file, underneath all the existing code in the “wp-config.php” file. Next, remove the “<?php” which is at the top of the “sunrise.php file” before saving your “wp-config.php” file.

I also suggest creating a comment line just above the start of the code you just pasted from the “sunrise.php” file just to be clear on where your pre-existing “wp-config.php” code ends and the “sunrise.php” code starts.

Here’s an example of such a comment line:

*/BEGIN SUNRISE PHP FILE CONTENTS

The next step in your WordPress admin dashboard should read like this:

Please uncomment the line //define( ‘SUNRISE’, ‘on’ ); in the /home/coach/public_html/wp-config.php file.

Again, this is a potentially confusing line of code because I’ve yet to see the “//define( ‘SUNRISE’, ‘on’ );” in a “wp-config.php” file. So you’ll need to copy and paste the “define( ‘SUNRISE’, ‘on’ );” without the “//” characters in front of it or the quotations around it. Then, paste this just below the multisite rules which you’ve already pasted into your “wp-config.php” file.

Next, you’ll need to obtain your IP address where your website is hosted from your hosting provider and input that into the place where it requests your IP. DO NOT use YOUR IP for this. It needs to be the IP where your website is hosted, not the IP you log on to the internet with.

The fourth setup option asks if you want non-supporters to be able to set up sites on your network, I’ll leave that up to you.

Finally, you can choose which domain the visitors will be mapped to. I use “domain entered by user” for this option, but again that’s up to you.

Now, your users will be able to set up sites on your network and (provided that their DNS is pointed towards the IP address where your WordPress network is hosted), their sites will map to their own domain.

This is a part of WordPress Multisite Network With Multiple Domains tutorial.