cemdev

yeah, authentication will actually be handled by my application (non-wordpress – and a single domain). I would then intend to modify the plugin settings directly in the wordpress database, so that the user could post from their site – they would never need to authenticate through the plugin. (in fact, I intend to hide that admin menu item from them)

The theory’s good, we’ll see if it works in practice. I’ll give it a shot.

Thanks for the response!

Chris

That seems to be using a CNAME (on the www), pointing to an A record (on the non-www). That’s what I want to avoid as I don’t want clients tied to an IP address – just to a domain name so that I can change servers without having to go through the rather immense hassle of having everyone change their settings, not quite fully understanding why, only knowing that it’s a PITA.

Aside from the scary DNS report, it does seem to be working. And the domain is not parked or in any way registered with my web server, or my web server company – which really does make sense as the site the CNAME is pointing to – netleksites.com has a dedicated IP, so, so long as Apache works similarly to IIS (which I’m more familiar with) it should route all requests to the same spot (netleksites.com) – at which point the WP domain mapping should take effect. So far it seems to work, leaves the domain fully in the client’s control for MX records and allows me to change network IPs with no client updates required.

Lots more testing needed, as if this works I’m not sure why sites like wordpress.com don’t use it. They recommend CNAME’s only for mapping subdomains, they manage the whole domain if you want to map the root domain, and allow you to set MX records through their system. That’s the alternate route, but a whole lot more work that I don’t need to have done if CNAMEs work.

Basically, I’m doubting this solution only because the big guys (wordpress.com) aren’t using it. I’m wondering if they know something I don’t, or vice versa.

Thanks for your help Andrea & Ipstenu – I guess all that’s left is to run with CNAME and if I run into trouble, then switch to WordPress.com’s model.

Thanks Andrea – when I try to park a domain that’s using CNAME with a 3rd party registrar (namecheap.com in this case) cpanel errors and tells me I cannot park the domain because the domain is not registered with my nameservers.

Any other way to to give it a server alias? Unfortunately Linux and Apache admin are well outside my areas of expertise. I think you’re spot on though – the problem is with Apache configuration. The CNAME routes to the correct IP, so I’m guessing that as soon as I figure out how to tell Apache to route the request to network.com everything should ‘just work’.

That’s the dream, anyways.

but they have a nameserver. It’s just their registrar’s, not mine. it ‘should’ work. their domain is correctly using a nameserver (in this case namecheap.com’s nameserver) at which they should be able to set CNAME records that point to network.com, then the WP domain mapping should kick in.

I’m going to keep playing. If this isn’t possible it’s a MAJOR problem. Doesn’t make sense that it wouldn’t work…

not sure if it helps, but when I go to example.com it redirects to:

example.com/cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi

Which just displays the text: Template Error: The template file must be given