Linking subdomains to multisite

Dear all,

I’m managing my own WordPress website and want to convert it to a multilingual site. Therefore, I plan on using a multisite setup in which I want to redirect http://www.companyname.com to en.companyname.nl. My main website is running on http://www.companyname.nl. I already have a number of subdomains running for company name.nl and all hosting, also for the .com and other tlds is done on the same server.

I successfully managed to reconfigure WordPress such that I could enable the multisite feature. Hence, I now have the “Sites” option and have been able to define a website en.companyname.nl and de.companyname.nl. Furthermore, I created subdomains en.companyname.nl and de.companyname.nl in the DirectAdmin panel of my host.

What I do not grasp is how the link between these subdomains and the WordPress install works. When creating the subdomains in DirectAdmin, I end up with the subfolders de and en in the public_html folder of companyname.nl. These feature an index.html, which thus is shown when you navigate to the respective subdomain. But how do I get a link from en.companyname.nl to the WordPress environment running on companyname.nl?

– Do I need to include some htaccess file for this and if so, what?
– Or do I need to create WordPress installs in the subdomain folders for each additional site, and is the concept of Multisite based on the fact that the “Sites” menu function in fact just redirects to the respective subdomain? I.e. you have separate WordPress installs, but they are just connected with a link in the menu?

I would like to have shared content (media library). Furthermore, I would like to define relations between pages, e.g. there is a page “About is” in Dutch, English and German by using a plugin.

I guess I’m not completely aware about the basics of the Multisite solution. Would anyone be willing to remove this fuzziness for me? 🙂

Many thanks in advance.

Best,
Luc