• mbc2016

    (@mbc2016)


    Hiya πŸ™‚ I consider myself a novice in the WordPress scene, so please bear with me if I say something idiotic.

    Recently we’ve decided to upgrade our website. It’s been up and running using WordPress for years now (www.mobicoach.eu). Now, we’ve set up WordPress multisite so we can use it for an already existing subdomain (wp.mobicoach.eu). When everything seemed to work fine we’ve set up a staging site on the subdomain.

    Sadly it turns out all pages will not work on the subdomain (wp.mobicoach.eu/distributievervoer). The homepage works fine but every other page results in a 404 error, page not found. Our primary site keeps working fine, luckily.

    The pages do exist within WordPress. Actually as far as I can see everything should work. The pages themselves, their permalinks, the menu structure, within WordPress it all seems fine. Yet when I try to preview or publish one of these pages from WordPress, I get the same 404 error.

    I’ve been searching for a solution for days now, to no avail. Similar problems got resolved using Settings > Permalinks > Save Changes or by modifying .htaccess files. Unfortunately, nothing has worked for us so far.

    On top of this problem, all new subdomains made using WordPress multisite result in errors. So it leaves me thinking our Apache server isn’t allowing WordPress to make changes in urls. Yet mod_rewrite is activated and should work.

    What am I missing here? Maybe it’s our .htaccess after all?

    # BEGIN WordPress
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
    
    # add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
    RewriteRule ^wp-admin$ wp-admin/ [R=301,L]
    
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
    RewriteRule ^ - [L]
    RewriteRule ^(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $1 [L]
    RewriteRule ^(.*\.php)$ $1 [L]
    RewriteRule . index.php [L]
    # END WordPress
Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Moderator Bet Hannon

    (@bethannon1)

    Did you set up wildcard subdomains in your hosting account?

    You might want to take a look at these two articles and make sure you followed ALL the steps:
    https://codex.wordpress.org/Before_You_Create_A_Network
    https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network

    Thread Starter mbc2016

    (@mbc2016)

    Yeah, we’ve set up wildcard subdomains and as far as I can see I followed all steps described in the codexes. It’s still not working though. I can manually copy and paste page content to our first site but that wasn’t really why we tried to set up multisite in the first place.

    Maybe a fresh install will fix it :/

    Moderator Bet Hannon

    (@bethannon1)

    Are you letting the WP network admin create the subdomains? Or are you trying to create them in your hosting account? You should be letting the multisite network create them, but this is a common error.

    I can manually copy and paste page content to our first site but that wasn’t really why we tried to set up multisite in the first place.

    You do realize that in multisite, each site is completely separate, right? They don’t by default share content between them. There are some plugins that you can try to set up content sharing between the sites, but it may be that multisite won’t help you accomplish your goal?

    I have heard some folks say that making a site that has existed for a while into a multisite creates some issues, but I’m not clear what those are. You might want to try creating a multisite with a completely NEW WP install, just to rule out that it’s something with the server setup.

    For instance, have you verified with your host that they do in fact, support wildcard subdomains? Some don’t.

    Thread Starter mbc2016

    (@mbc2016)

    Thanks for replying.

    Yes, I am letting the WP Network Admin create the subdomains. A new site created that way seems to work fine except for the pages following it. For example, the default WordPress sample page won’t even load. (nieuw.mobicoach.eu/sample-page)

    The main goal was to set up a staging or test site environment. Then, once the newer page is done and approved of, I’d use a plugin like Duplicator or WP Clone to transfer the content to the main website. When I ran into the problem that all pages couldn’t be found, I started thinking of copying page content manually. That’s what I meant earlier. All images and other content are stored elsewhere anyway. As long as I use the same theme settings, fill pages with the same text and upload the same images, everything should be fine.

    Nevertheless, dropping multisite altogether and working with two fresh and separate WP installs is probably the best idea. It frustrates me though that I can’t work out what’s going wrong and why multisite isn’t letting me use pages πŸ˜›

    Our host does support wildcard subdomains.

    Moderator Bet Hannon

    (@bethannon1)

    I’ve tried to read back carefully through what you wrote before. Is your multisite set up on a subdomain, wp.mobicoach.eu as the main site? Or is it set up on mobicoach.eu as the main site?

    IF your main site is mobicoach.eu, and you are trying to create wp.mobicoach.eu, BUT that subdomain already exists in your hosting, you will get errors.

    Multisite can be a lot more complicated to run. In terms of a staging environment, I’d say two single-site installs is the way to go. But do let me know if you want to keep trying to figure out why multisite isn’t working.

    In terms of running a staging site, there are some plugins like this one that might be helpful: https://wordpress.org/plugins/content-staging/

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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