Networked Install (i.e. Multisite) not working

  • sidcam

    (@sidcam)


    12 years, 2 months ago

    I am brand new to WordPress and can’t get my networked installation to generate blogs. Thank you in advance for any help you can give me.

    When I try to create a blog site the system goes through the motions and says the site has been created. The sites show up in my My Sites list as well as online under blogs. It also sends out email notices and even lists them on the primary website. I can even edit it in Sites within the network admin.

    However when I try to visit these sites they always say, “could not find the site” (IE) or “Firefox can’t find the server at”. There aren’t typos in the domain it’s trying to go to either.

    I installed the latest version of WP (3.3.1) about 10 days ago. It’s on a pretty standard CentOS/cPanel VPS.

    About two days before that, on this same server, I had installed a test copy of WP in another directory (and database) so I could evaluate the software. That install still creates blog sites just fine, so I’ve mostly ruled out hosting as my problem. The only real difference between the two installs is the test version was set up for sub directories and the production version is set up to use sub domains.

    To troubleshoot the problem, I have turned off all plug-ins, including BuddyPress, and still can’t get it to create a working site.

    There are two mistakes that I am aware of on my part to note.

    After a few days working on the site I realized I wasn’t operating in a networked environment- somehow it hadn’t been turned on during installation. Looking back, when I created this install I was tired and manually set it up using files from the first install. Unfortunately that wp-config file was set up for directories not sub domains.

    A plugin vendor (WPMU) made me realize my problem and I quickly fixed my mistake enough to get networking up and running. However I didn’t initially try to create a second site to realize that feature was broken.

    A second issue I am aware of is that there was a theme problem fairly early on which I solved by deleting all other themes except for the Buddypress theme I was using (including the default WordPress themes).

    In researching the problem I read that WP looks for it’s default theme and can’t create a site without it, so I reinstalled the themes Twenty Eleven and Twenty Ten, but the error has not been resolved.

    I have also replaced/reinstalled most of the working WP files.

    At this stage I’m pretty sure the problem is in the database from a botched installation, but don’t know how to fix it and haven’t been able to find a fix online. I do know how to use PHP MyAdmin if there’s some editing that can resolve this.

    One thing that seems odd is that my dashboard under “Right Now” says, “You have 4 sites and 2 users.” when I actually only had the one primary site (all others had been deleted because they didn’t work). I just stopped and added 2 sites (that failed to create) and yet it still says 4 sites.

    My desire is to avoid starting from scratch or losing my settings. I’ve spend days setting up profile fields and plugins and really don’t want to lose that work.

    Again, thank you in advance for reading this and helping.

    Sid

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    12 years, 2 months ago

    When I try to create a blog site the system goes through the motions and says the site has been created. The sites show up in my My Sites list as well as online under blogs. It also sends out email notices and even lists them on the primary website. I can even edit it in Sites within the network admin.

    However when I try to visit these sites they always say, “could not find the site” (IE) or “Firefox can’t find the server at”. There aren’t typos in the domain it’s trying to go to either.

    Subdomains I presume? And sub.domain.com/wp-admin works but NOT sub.domain.com?

    Thread Starter sidcam

    (@sidcam)

    12 years, 2 months ago

    Subdomains, yes.

    Neither sub.domain.com or sub.domain.com/wp-admin works. All I have is the main site, the main site’s dashboard and network admin.

    Will WordPress create any files or directories specific to the subdomain or will everything be virtual? My chmods don’t appear to be a problem, but I can’t find any new directories and blog.dir remains empty (although it is on my original test site as well).

    Thanks for you assistance.
    Sid

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    12 years, 2 months ago

    Ah. Okay. You won’t find any new directories (even blogs.dir doesn’t show up until you upload files)

    What’s in your .htaccess?

    And did you set up wildcad subdomains on your server?

    Thread Starter sidcam

    (@sidcam)

    12 years, 2 months ago

    I will investigate wildcard in just a second.

    In regard to .htaccess, one thing to note is that this is in fact installed as an add-on site (in a directory of another site) via cPanel and that parent site also has a .htaccess file. Not sure if those are recursive or not.

    Anyway, the .htaccess for the WordPress installation directory is:

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]

    # uploaded files
    RewriteRule ^files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$1 [L]

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
    RewriteRule ^ – [L]
    RewriteRule . index.php [L]

    Thread Starter sidcam

    (@sidcam)

    12 years, 2 months ago

    Just Googled it. Since .htaccess is recursive, let me add this.

    In the directory above my WordPress installation (the host site/public_html directory) there is another .htaccess script specific to a YouTube clone script I’m using to run a video training website. Because I intend to integrate the two websites, they use the same database. Unfortunately, that script doesn’t always function well when it’s installed in a subdirectory.

    Here is it’s .htaccess:

    # Comment the 2 lines below if the server returns 500 errors!
    Options -Indexes
    Options +FollowSymLinks

    #Uncomment following lines if you want to use image caching!
    #<IfModule mod_expires.c>
    # ExpiresActive On
    # ExpiresDefault A1209600
    # ExpiresByType text/html A1
    #</IfModule>

    # Uncomment following lines if Apache doesnt support MultiViews!
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On

    # Uncomment the 2 lines below if you are using http://www.domain.com
    # as the baseurl for the site and users access your site
    # via domain.com (THIS IS REQUIRED FOR JQUERY TO WORK)

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule .* loader.php [L,QSA]
    </IfModule>

    # Edit below lines and set to
    # ErrorDocument CODE /RELATIVE/error.php
    # If the script is installed in the default document
    # root then relative is null.
    #ErrorDocument 401 /error.php
    #ErrorDocument 403 /error.php
    #ErrorDocument 404 /error.php

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    12 years, 2 months ago

    In the directory above my WordPress installation (the host site/public_html directory) there is another

    BZZZZZZZT! Houston, we’ve got a problem.

    You cannot use Subdomains if WP isn’t installed in public_html. You need to use Subfolders.

    Thread Starter sidcam

    (@sidcam)

    12 years, 2 months ago

    First off, THANK YOU so much!

    I just set up a wildcard subdomain in cPanel and sure enough it’s now spitting out sub-domain websites- including ones that previously weren’t working. I never knew a wildcard option existed. Soooo glad it’s not a database issue.

    But now I have to ask why you say it will be a problem if it’s not located in public_html?

    It is, for the moment anyway, working as it should.

    FYI- I intend to sell domain mapping services and have been told to only set it up as subdomains.

    Moderator Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

    (@ipstenu)

    🏳️‍🌈 Advisor and Activist

    12 years, 2 months ago

    Unless you’re doing it as an add-on domain (like public_html/myotherdomain ) AND that folder is reachable at a top leve (i.e. http://myotherdomain.com), it’s not supposed to work.

    I suppose if you had it as sub.domain.com and were making SUB sub domains (sub.sub.domain.com) and thus had it all in public_html/sub, it MIGHT work, but it’s not supported.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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