Multisite, Multiblog, Multi Domain and BlueHost

  • glengreen

    (@glengreen)


    13 years, 1 month ago

    Hello good people,

    My first post to this forum.

    I’ve done some searching and checked the FAQ but I didn’t see an answer that appeared to match the conundrum I have. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    First, the context:
    I have two websites, one mine, another my girlfriends. Both sites are hosted in BlueHost.
    Mine is home grown HTML and I’d like to convert it to WordPress 3.1+. I’d setup the GF’s site in WordPress about two years ago (using BlueHost’s auto install.)

    Both sites have their own domains. Her account is the primary account under BlueHost. I moved my HTML site over to BlueHost about a year ago. (Mine use to be under ReadyHosting but they lost all of my email on two occasions – so good riddance to them.)

    My site has a public facing blog as well as a password protected (friends and family) blog. I secure the whole directory for the F&F blog with Bluehost directory password protection.

    I was excited to see that WP 3.0 included multisite functionality since I’m seeking as simple a solution as possible. (I prefer writing on my site compared to fussing with code.) And yet, what I’ve read has left me with a few questions.

    The questions:

    1) I’d like to convert my site to WordPress under the same hosted account. What I’ve read seems to indicate that there are two choices: either a subdirectory or a subdomain. This seems to imply that my site would need to be a subdirectory or subdomain of her’s. Is this the case or can I maintain our site’s separate domain?
    Since there is already a working WP site and an HTML site (even backing up), I’m disinclined to experiment until I have a better understanding.

    2) Not only do I want two discreet websites, but (greedy person that I am), I’d also like my site to have two blogs so that I can maintain the same site structure that I currently have: one public facing blog and a secured blog. Can this be done with multisite functionality and in tandem with keeping our two sites hosted in the same BlueHost account, both powered by a single install of wordpress? Or do I need two instances of wordpress together? Or is there some other approach I should take? And if so: can you point me in the direction of some clear instructions?

    3) Assuming this is feasible at all, will both sites share a common back-end administration? – I wonder what considerations there are for a shared administration, if we’re at risk of accidentally affecting the other’s site with updates, et al. It’s not a deal breaker, I’m just trying to understand what my end result will look like. Ideally, they’d have their own admins to reduce risk of user error.

    4) Bonus question: is there a method to use BlueHosts directory password protection to secure my Friends and Family blog? Based on the dabbling I’ve done with WordPress, (since the tool is dynamically driven from a Database) it seems unlikely that I can use a directory control to protect the content of an entire blog on my site. If not, is their an equal or superior method to secure a second blog on the same site?

    Thanks for all kind replies.

    Cheers,
    Glen

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
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  • Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    1 – you set them up as one or the other first, then use the domain mapping plugin to use a separate domain for that site.

    tip: on bluehost they do not officially support the wildcard subdomains needed for the subdomain format.

    2. it depends on the structure of what you have now. you would not be using the password protection the way you have it, since all folder for the blogs are virtual. Meaning they do not exist on the server so there’s no way to tell it to protect that.

    There are, however, many (many) privacy plugins and membership plugins and various plugins to lock down the content in the private blog.

    3. see #2.

    Thread Starter glengreen

    (@glengreen)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    Thanks for the response Andrea.

    The domain mapping plugin: is it canonical? Or am I at risk of depending on a plugin that may not be supported.

    Pardon my caution, I just don’t want to risk my GF’s site nor put a log of effort into migrating my content into a new environment only to find that my domain is no longer supported because a plugin losses compatibility with the latest version of word press.

    Thanks again for your help.

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    The domain mapping plugin: is it canonical? Or am I at risk of depending on a plugin that may not be supported.

    Look at the developers of the plugin. One of them is Donncha, who works for Automattic and was the original developer of WordPressMU. The other is Ron, who worked on the merge of mu into 3.0.

    So yeah, I’d say the plugin will continue to be supported…

    The plugin itself has been around for a couple years.

    Thread Starter glengreen

    (@glengreen)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    I’ve been doing a lot of reading and watching a number of youtube videos in preparation for possibly making the move this weekend.

    And yet, I still have a major question.
    If I already have a site that is in WordPress (my GF), can I just convert it to MultiSite? And if so, what happens to its content? Does it seamlessly transfer over?

    All of the articles and videos seem to imply that one starts with a clean install of WordPress which is then upgraded to Multisite. And I’ve seen other articles that talk about moving an existing WordPress to the new MultiSite WordPress. (The process seems rather daunting BTW.)

    I’m hoping that I can just update the existing WP site to MultiSite on the current BlueHost), maintain all of the posts, etc. and then add new sites / domains (my personal site to be exact).

    And does the existing GF site become ‘subservient’ to a master Multisite?

    In other words, does the structure become something like this?

    Master Multisite
    – Girlfriendsite
    – Mysite

    Or is the structure like this?

    Girlfriendsite
    – Mysite

    Or am I missing the boat all together?

    Thanks for your patience.

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    If I already have a site that is in WordPress (my GF), can I just convert it to MultiSite? And if so, what happens to its content? Does it seamlessly transfer over?

    Yes, you can create a network on an exisiting site.

    it becomes the “master” blog, or main site in the network.

    Nothing happens to your content. It remains where it is.

    I’m hoping that I can just update the existing WP site to MultiSite on the current BlueHost), maintain all of the posts, etc. and then add new sites / domains (my personal site to be exact)

    Yes, you can.

    Or is the structure like this?

    Girlfriendsite
    – Mysite

    Yep.

    http://wpebooks.com/2010/09/how-to-enable-multisite-in-wordpress/

    There are people who have been writing that enabling the network was intended for a fresh new site. They are incorrect.

    Thread Starter glengreen

    (@glengreen)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    Ah! That’s good news!

    BTW. I’ve seen your posts in various online articles. You get around. 🙂

    I guess I’m going to try the manual updates since some of the plugins to update seem to be in question from what I’ve read.

    My next mission will be to find the best security tool to lock down the secondary blog on my site:

    Girlfriendsite (Domain 1)
    – Mysite (Public) blog (Domain 2)
    – – Mysite Private / Secured blog (Domain 2)

    Hopefully I can execute this model.

    Thanks again Andrea, you’ve been very helpful. I greatly appreciate your time and feedback.

    Best Regards,
    Glen

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    My next mission will be to find the best security tool to lock down the secondary blog on my site:

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/more-privacy-options/

    Thread Starter glengreen

    (@glengreen)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    Started the install and already hit a wall:

    “Because your install is not new, the sites in your WordPress network must use sub-domains. The main site in a sub-directory install will need to use a modified permalink structure, potentially breaking existing links.”

    Since I’m on Bluehost, the sub-domains option isn’t a choice.

    Thread Starter glengreen

    (@glengreen)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    I’ve found two articles and they both appear somewhat intimidating…

    http://shibashake.com/wordpress-theme/move-an-existing-blog-into-wordpress-multi-site

    http://howtofixblogs.com/migrating-your-current-wordpress-blog-to-a-wordpress-multisite-blog/

    And this article references the WordPress Codex which states to use Wildcard subdomains (again an issue with BlueHost): http://codex.wordpress.org/Migrating_Multiple_Blogs_into_WordPress_3.0_Multisite

    And they both appear to assume that there are two different hosting environments involved because they seem to imply that both instances of WordPress must coexist at the same time – the old site that you want to migrate and the new wordpress Multisite instance. It seems to me that I’d have to have two instances of WordPress running within BlueHost.

    Or, I may have to full export my old site, delete it and the WordPress instance and install a new version of WordPress (with no sites) that I then enable into Multisite.

    This makes me more than a little nervous.

    Thread Starter glengreen

    (@glengreen)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    Hmmm… This article may contain the solution:

    http://journalxtra.com/2010/07/how-to-force-multi-site-to-use-subdirectories/

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    you can force it, but that warning is because the main site gets /blog/ inserted into permalinks. That’s what it means by breaking exisiting links.

    It can be removed manually, but it’s been… picky in 3.1.

    the sub-domains option isn’t a choice.

    Cuz it’s not officially supported.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    13 years, 1 month ago

    Picky is a nice way to say it.

    I would advocate NOT removing the blog slug and instead using .htaccess to handle redirects and, thus, not loose your link juice.

    Thread Starter glengreen

    (@glengreen)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    I appreciate the feedback.

    Even reading this article on how to remove the blog slug, I really don’t understand the issues that the author is explaining in the following section.
    http://journalxtra.com/2010/07/how-to-force-multi-site-to-use-subdirectories/

    “Forcing WordPress to allow subdirectory addon sites on old WordPress installations has a price:

    1. Subdirectory sites that resemble existent post, page, tag and category URLs must not be created,
    2. Some subdirectory sites will not display as they should because of conflicts with the main site’s permalink URL structure.

    I’m also concerned that I’ll be making a bunch of Frankenstein tweaks that will blow up later on future releases.

    The solution for the first issue is simple:

    * Do not create addon sites that use pre-existent URLs.”

    When we’re talking about broken links are we talking about external sites that link to the existing blog or even internal links within the existing blog? Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Broken is broken after all.

    There was another issue I’d encountered within the WordPress, “Create a network page”.

    Server Address

    We recommend you change your siteurl to girlfriendsite.com before enabling the network feature. It will still be possible to visit your site using the www prefix with an address like www.jennymacbeth.com but any links will not have the www prefix.
    Server Address The internet address of your network will be www.jennymacbeth.com.

    It doesn’t specify where (or how) I should remove the “www.” I’ve yet to research this. Perhaps this is minor and easy but I’ve already spent several hours researching and I’m only on step 1 of the process. (Not counting backup.)

    I think I’m going to table this process for now and hope that there are cleaner (read: easier and less risky) options in future releases. My first priority is: do no harm. And even though I’ve backed up the site before undertaking this, I’ve never tried to restore a WordPress site and I’m concerned that I’ll encounter other issues if I need to try and fix something.

    Or perhaps I’ll get my courage up again next weekend. 🙂

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    And this article references the WordPress Codex which states to use Wildcard subdomains (again an issue with BlueHost): http://codex.wordpress.org/Migrating_Multiple_Blogs_into_WordPress_3.0_Multisite

    It’s the exact same process with a subfolder setup.

    no, you still do not need two install.

    You DO need to backup your old site that you want as a subsite. And also export all the posts.

    Then you do the scary part – delete it from the server.

    Do this after you’ve enabled multisite on the main domain.
    then create a new site in there, which will replace your old site.

    THEN you import in your old content.

    Thread Starter glengreen

    (@glengreen)

    13 years, 1 month ago

    This begs a few more questions Andrea.

    1) You say: backup the site. There are multiple ways of doing this. To date, I’ve been using the CPanel > File Manager and have selected all files within the www folder, compressed them and exported them. Is this the optimal method and will the files be used as part of the restoration or is this simply for backup?

    2) You also say to export the posts (via the WordPress export feature.) Does the export give me everything I need to duplicate the site after being deleted? (See also point 1.)

    3) You note that I should then enable multisite and then delete the old site and then setup a new site. Will this process mitigate the blog slug issue and allow me to choose the directory method?

    4)How exactly do I delete the old site? Are there specific folders that need deleted? Databases? Is there a simple method for this?

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
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