WordPress MultiSite – Multi Domain from one Installation

Posted by BetterWebSpace

We’d like to get more technical posts on this blog, mainly to remind ourselves of things we’re likely to forget, but also to help our users as well…  So when we were asked to do some testing for a solution today we thought we’d start with this….

Many of our users are familiar with WordPress, we use it both as a blogging platform and a content management system for our users to allow them to update their own websites with no technical knowledge. Our designer is a WordPress theme specialist and can make a WordPress installation look very different (contact us for details)!

WordPress MU was a separate project to the main WordPress code for a while, but since version 3 has been migrated into the main core of WordPress.

The Problem: WordPress supports multiple blogs from one code installation of WordPress in different folders or subdomains, what is needed here is to create WordPress blogs on multiple subdomains of different domains (e.g. maindomain.com, blog1.maindomain.com, blog2.anotherdomain.com, blog3.yetanotherdomain.com).

The Solution: We’re not going to re-invent the wheel here, so where possible we’ll link to relevant tutorials for these steps, also note that we’d advise not visiting the subdomains you want to view until you get to the end of the tutorial – cached DNS causes all sorts of confusion!

  1. Install WordPress (If you’re one of our customers you can install it from within the Fantastico section of the control panel, if you’re not then download and install it from here).
  2. Ensure you are running the latest version by logging into your WordPress Admin and checking for any updates.

    Lets take a moment to setup the DNS next as this can take a while to settle down…

  3. Login into your hosting control panel and go to parked domains, in here you’ll need to park all of the domains that you want blogs to appear at, park them to point directly to your /public_html directory with no redirection.

    So in the case of our example we’ve pointed the nameservers for all of our domains to our main hosting account (maindomain.com), and then parked anotherdomain.com and yetanotherdomain.com on top of that so that when we visit anotherdomain.com and yetanotherdomain.com we end up in the same place – your WordPress installation.WordPress MultiSite - Park a domain in cPanel

  4. Next we need to setup wildcard subdomains, this is so that blog1.maindomain.com and blog2.maindomain.com will work and is normal for a WordPress Multi-Site installation, however we need to do it for all of the domain names we want.

    Go to subdomains in your hosting control panel and you should find that all of your parked domains appear in the drop down box. Enter an asterisk (*) in the first box and public_html in the third box then click create, repeat this for all of the domains in the drop down.WordPress MultiSite - Add a wilcard subdomain in cPanel

  5. We’re now ready to make WordPress work Multi-Site within Subdomains, follow the WordPress Create A Network tutorial, starting at Step 3.
    – Step 3: Allow Multisite
    – Step 4: Installing a Network (choose Sub-domains).
    – Step  5: Enabling the Network
  6. You can stop at this stage, if you simply want to run blogs on subdomains e.g. blog1.maindomain.com, blog2.maindomain.com. You can start configuring these in the Super Admin section of the WordPress Dashboard.
  7. However, if you want to run multiple domains, you’ll need the following plugin:
    WordPress MU Domain Mapping

    It is not possible to do an automatic install of this plugin as it has files that need putting in different places, so be sure to follow the WordPress MU Domain Mapping Installation Instructions, steps 1 to 4.
  8. Create a new site, for either the main domains subdomain, or the subdomain of one of your parked domains:

    WordPress MultiSite - Creating a Site in your Network

  9. You’ll notice that once you’ve added it, it has no “Mapping” on the right hand side of the table. This mains that blog2.maindomain.com would work, but blog2.anotherdomain.com would not, and is what the plugin we’ve installed is there to correct.
  10. Click on Domain Mapping in Super Admin and insert the IP address of your server in the Server IP Address before clicking Save.
  11. Click on Domains in Super Admin and enter the site ID for the site we just created, along with the Domain name/subdomain we want to attach to that domain. WordPress MultiSite - Mapping a domain with WordPress MU Domain Mapping

    At this point, your domains will redirect correctly to the parked subdomain, in our example going to blog2.anotherdomain.com would deliver you to blog2.maindomain.com.

  12. Next click on sites, and edit the site that you’re working with.

    Change the “Domain” field to be the correct domain for that particular subdomain (In our case blog2.anotherdomain.com).

    WordPress MultiSite - Final editing of a site to use the correct domain

  13. Now blog2.anotherdomain.com should work, repeat steps 8 to 12 all of your other subdomains/domains.

If you’d like us to set this up for you, contact us for a quote!

BetterWebSpace Domains :: .co and the rest!

Posted by BetterWebSpace

.Com and .Net

You may have already read about this elsewhere…

Verisign are the registry for .com and .net domain names and under their 6 year contract with ICANN they are allowed to increase prices to registrars by up to 7% per year. They are allowed to do this 4 times during their 6 year contract and have done it twice already since 2006.

The last two price increases, and fluctuations in the exchange rate we’ve swallowed and managed to keep prices the same to try to offer great value to our customers. Unfortunately this time we’ve made the decision that we can’t swallow this increase again.

Unlike our hosting accounts there is no way of ringfencing this price increase, so when your renewal comes it will be at the new prices set out below.  We also recognise that we may have to review UK domain prices later in the year due to the increase in VAT rate announced in the latest budget.

Pricing

  • .com will rise from £9.99 per year to: £10.99 per year.
  • .net will rise from £9.99 per year to: £10.99 per year.

These prices come into effect from the 1st July, so if you want to purchase a domain name at the current price, we suggest you get in before then!

.co Landrush

Every so often a new domain name extension comes along that causes a stir, we saw it with .tv (belonging to the country Tuvalu), and we’re seeing it again with the Republic of Columbia’s country code top level domain – the .co.

companies, commuinties, committees and commerce sites have all been waiting for .co extension to be released (and it’s not just open to them, anyone can buy one). Landrush phase is open now and we’re getting ready to pre-register your domain names.

What is Landrush?

Domain registrars around the world are all accepting pre-orders, so are we! We can’t guarantee to get your name, but we’ll use our preferred registrar to do what we can to make it happen. If we don’t manage to register it for you (because somebody else gets there first) we’ll refund the domain price back to you. That simple!

Once Landrush ends on the 20th July 2010*, our registrar will attempt to register your domain with the registry for .co domains (.CO Internet SAS), this is done on a first-come, first served basis as many other registrars will be doing the same (hence the lack of guarantee).

If your registration is successful we will let you know shortly afterwards. If it is not successful, we will also let you know and refund your domain price within 30 days. Refunds will not be given for any reason if we are successful in registering your chosen domain name.

After the launch date we will add domains to our regular ordering system and you will be able to order them in the usual manner, read on for how to pre-order.

If you wish to pre-register a .co you should:

  1. First review the list of restricted domain names
  2. Raise a ticket with us detailing:
    • The domain name.
    • The name, address, telephone number and email address the domain should be registered to.
  3. We will check that the domain you have requested is available with our registrar, if it isn’t we’ll let you know and ask if you want to choose something else or wait until general release when this appears in our billing system and can do your own searches.
  4. We will send you an invoice to be paid before we submit this to registrar (we are NOT adding .co to our ordering system during the landrush phase to avoid confusion by new clients!).
  5. Soon after the Launch Date, we will tell you if your registration has been successful.

Pricing:

  • .co domain names will be priced at £45.99 per year.

* 20th July 2010 is the “Launch Date” for .co , which out of our control and subject to change.

MySQL Upgrades & Offer

Posted by BetterWebSpace

MySQL Database Upgrade

Many of our clients use the MySQL database engine to power you forums, blogs, content management systems and all manner of custom scripts that they’ve written themselves. We always recommend you use the most current, secure and stable versions of any scripts, however during this upgrade that is especially important!

In the not too distant future we will be upgrading MySQL on all of our servers, the procedure and timing of this upgrade will vary from server to server and such as we will be scheduling and informing customers on a server by server basis of dates for ugprades. Some servers have a minor upgrade to do, others have a much more major upgrade:

  • Older servers running MySQL4 have the largest upgrade to go through (MySQL4.x to MySQL5.1), we’ve held off upgrading these servers in the past to allow script vendors time to upgrade their scripts to support MySQL5. We believe by this time most scripts should be ready and as such are now taking steps to get ready for this upgrade.

    Please ensure you are running the latest versions of any scripts you have chosen to install on these servers, if you need help to do an upgrade please raise a Premium Support ticket so we can assist. Doing this may minimise issues you encounter after the upgrade.

    The above applies to the following servers: Dumbledore, Hermione, Hagrid and Harry

  • Newer servers already running MySQL5.0 will only have a short upgrade to go through to MySQL5.1. This is a far simpler upgrade and any scripts you have running on MySQL5.0 should work fine on MySQL5.1.

    However, we still recommend that you run the most current, stable and secure versions of any scripts you have chosen to install.

    The above applies to the following servers: Huffpluff and Ravenclaw

There are several reasons for doing the upgrade, but the biggest one is that we need to follow our own advice and have the latest versions running! Once the upgrades are complete, one of cPanel’s newer features will be implemented where your MySQL database size counts towards your total account quota, in the past this hasn’t happened but it is key to our planning for new servers and number of accounts on a server.

Further updates on this will follow….

BetterWebSpace Offer!

Are you taking part in our Mad Month of June? You’ve only got another two weeks to get your domain and/or hosting paid for free, make sure you don’t miss out as other clients are taking advantage of this!

Kind regards,
Keiron @ BetterWebSpace