WordPress is an amazing platform for anyone who is looking to get online, express their views, write their opinions.
Over the years, it has evolved so much, brought so many features that even Big publications houses use WordPress for their Content Management System.
One of its feature that makes life so much easier for people who are looking to create multiple sites on a single domain.
Now, the reason for creating Multi Sites can be different, like Creating different versions of a website on the basis of Region, or Language or maybe, to run a company blogs on different subdomains etc.
WordPress makes it easy to created Multi-Site and manage all of them from a single Dashboard so that updating themes, plugins etc can be done from a single place and let the blogs used why they are created in the first places, that is, writing.
In this post, we talk about creating Multisite in WordPress.
The guide is little technical so it is recommended to take a backup of every file we are going to make edits to.
The Preferred method of Creating a Multisite.
I’ve read many guides that talk about different methods of creating multi sites.
Method 1:
site1.domain.com
site2.domain.com
Method 2:
domain.com/site1
domain.com/site2
In my research, I’ve found that method 1 is preferred by almost everyone, and it also feels right to go with this method for any purpose we mentioned above.
If you create regional versions of your blog, it can be like this.
fr.domain.com (for France) | gr.domain.com (for Germany)
If you create language versions of your blog, it can be like this.
hi.domain.Com (Hindi Language) | en.domain.Com (English Langauge)
If you create multiple blogs for a company, it can be like this.
news.domain.com | press.domain.com | products.domain.com
Create WordPress Multisite on a Subdomain
To create WordPress Multisite on a Subdomain, you need to make sure you set up a Wildcard subdomain on your Domain name you want to create Multisite on. This can be done from where your Domain name is hosted.
The process is quite simple, just add a (*) sign. So that you can create as whatever subdomain you want to create from within the WordPress.
Enabling Multisite on Your WordPress Blog
The Multi-site featured is not enabled by default, but you can enable by adding a simple line of code in the WP-Config.php file of your WordPress. Don’t worry this is easy.
You can do this either by going to the File Manager in your cPanel or by using an FTP Client (FTP Client is Recommended). You can use Filezilla FTP Client.
Open the WP-Config.php in an editor to make edits to it. Add this code before it says. /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
/* Multisite */ define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true );
[su_note]Note: Make sure you download a copy of your WP-Config.php on your PC before making edits to it.[/su_note]
Once you save the WP-Config.php with edits, you will see the Multisite feature is enabled, which you can see in the Tools section of your WordPress Dashboard.
Before that, make sure you Deactivate all your plugins before doing so. You can activate them after creating the site
When you click on the Network Setup in the Tools section, you land on the page which gives you options to select the method to create multi-sites, You can choose the subdomain method and Click on Install.
You will get some codes which you have to put in the .htaccess file and wp-config.php file of your blog. Which is present in the root path of your domain name.
[su_note]Note: The .htaccess will not appear in the File Manager in Control Panel, you can use Legacy File Manager or use Filezilla FTP Client.[/su_note]
Once you paste the codes and update both the files. Go back to the WordPress Multisite section of your blog and create your Multi-site.
[su_note]Note: Once you create another site, your current blog’s path won’t get affected, you just need to make some changes mentioned below.[/su_note]
- If you are running your blog on www.domain.com, make sure you change it to domain.Com (this can be done from Settings section of WordPress dashboard)
- If might notice that the permalinks get reset, and you need to change it from Permalinks area in the Settings section of your WordPress Dashboard.
Most probably there is nothing that changes to the domain blog (which is one domain.com)
Now, you can move to the Dashboard of the site you just created. You will notice that the WordPress menu has a new option, My Sites, which brings you all your Multisite when you hover your mouse over it.
Now, the new blog is just like a fresh WordPress install, and from here, you can do anything you want to do with your blog.
For example, Change the Permalinks, Add Site Name, Description, Add Pages, Categories, Authors etc.
In most cases, people want their Multi Sites to look same, for that, you can Enable the same Theme and Plugins from the WordPress Dashboard.
If your Theme or Plugins allow your to export settings, you can save some labour by simply Importing the settings to the new blog.
[su_note]Note: The Plugins and Themes need to be Uploaded or Deleted from the Main Dashboard. You can activate or deactivate them accordingly from Individual sites.[/su_note]
So, this is pretty much it. The next step would be to add content to the site and do things we do on a newly installed WordPress blog.
