Wordpress blog on Apache VPS - wordpress

I have an existing site that is hosted on a LAMP VPS. I also have a blog that is hosted on Wordpress.com/blahblahblah. The goal is to have all of the traffic that goes to the blog at least go through the site to help with counting stats, SEO, and whatnot. My complete lack of familiarity with Wordpress leads me to believe that the easiest way to accomplish this would be to create a Wordpress instance on the VPS and host the blog there. I guess I'm asking two questions. First, what are the pitfalls of hosting a WP blog on a LAMP VPS? And second, is there an easier way to have that traffic pass through the existing site without pointless redirects?

Wordpress will work fine on a LAMP VPS.
Traffic should not pass through another domain, because as you said that is a pointless redirect. I am not sure why you would not want to use one of the many analytics available such as Google analytics.
If you needed to you can setup the other domain and add an index.php file with a header('Location: wordpressite.com'); and whatever other code you want.
Another, cleaner, option is to edit the Wordpress site itself to send the information required to the other site by using a plugin or perhaps some javascript code. This is typically what third party analytics plugins do.

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Changing Wordpress Domains / URLs

I'm being really cautious how I manage a switchover from an existing WordPress site to a new one.
In a nutshell....
I have designed a new wordpress website, let's call it NewWebsite.com
I have an existing website, let's call that MyBrand.com
I want to be able to point my domain name, MyBrand.com, at the NewWebsite.com server. So that MyBrand.com takes you to the newly designed WordPress instance.
I'm hosting both on TSOHost, they are both standard WordPress.org installs and I have access to root.
Any help would be hugely appreciated. I've done this once before and it ended badly, so treading carefully.
Thanks a lot for reading.

Installing multiple different instances of wordpress on the same website

I currently have a website up and running that is my freelancing website. What I wanted to do was create a testing subdirectory on the website.
So for example my site would be:
website.com
I want the testing site to be: website.com/test
I need this test to be private and require a password to view, as well as be a different installation of wordpress so I can manipulate it without editing my main website. Is this possible? Currently I have created a test directory from the cPanel that requires a password but it just brings me to a 404 not found page.
I would also like to create more, public, instances that I can use as a portfolio until I get more real clients. So for example I would like to have my site be: website.com/themeOne
Is any of this possible, or am I out of luck? Please let me know I would greatly appreciate any help. Anything I found found online thus far has either not been relevant or has not worked.
You can achieve this by setting up a wordpress multisite installation. I currently use this to host all my clients.
Will work like this.. Main site is website.com
Depending on how long you have had that site set up will determine whether your multisite install will be a subdirectory or a subdomain. If you have had your main site for a while it will be subdomains. ie. xyz.website.com
You will have to set up a wild card subdomain on your server though...so keep that in mind.
Here is the documentation on setting up a wordpress multisite
https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/ultimate-guide-multisite/
You can install as many WordPress instances as you like in subfolders example.com/test/ or subdomains test.example.com in one hosting account; see http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_Multiple_Blogs. (You are, of course, limited if your host does not support subdomains. And you may find lots of sites with lots of traffic will slow your whole hosting account.)
For these separate WordPress installs, you can use the same database; simply give each WordPress install a different database table prefix in wp-config.php. https://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php Or, give them all the installs a totally different databases, only limited by your hosting account.
To control access to a WordPress site, there is no need for access control in .htaccess or via Cpanel; use any one of a number of plugins that allow you to restrict access to anyone not logged into WordPress. See https://wordpress.org/plugins/search.php?type=term&q=password
And you can still control the user's role when they are logged into the site with one of those plugins, i.e. editor, administrator, etc., from within WordPress. That's because you want to give a client a Subscriber user level so they can simply login and view the site, rather than Administrator, who can see posts, plugins, etc. See https://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities
There is no need for WordPress Multisite, unless you want to go that way: see https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network But be aware that MS requires more server and DNS configurations if you want to use Domain Mapping: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/

How do I view my old wordpress site, after having redirected to Squarespace

I recently pointed my 1&1 registered domain, masonsmn.com, away from justhost where I had a wordpress site built toward my new site constructed using squarespace.
I would like to view a few pages of the old site as they were previously (i.e. I messed up. In hindsight a few screenshots then would have been a good idea).
Does anyone know how I can access those wordpress pages at this point?
Thanks,
You can add a hosts entry to your computer to force it to go to the old IP address. See google for instructions for your operating system. Don't forget to remove it later! :-)
The old site is on justhost. Do you still use them for hosting? If so, just download your old wordpress files via ftp. If you already cancelled your hosting, but it wasn't long ago, they may have your files backed up still. If this is the case I would give them a call and see what they can do.

Project Setup for Multisite development

I am about to develop two websites using wordpress with its multisite functionality. So www.domain1.com and www.domain2.com should point to the same wordpress installation.
The problem I have is that the domains are in productive use, so I cannot make them point somewhere else until development is not finished. I also do not have (and do not want to buy) two unused domains to create the develop setup, so what I would like to know is:
Can I setup subdomains for development and change it into »real« domains later on?
What I would like to know is how to setup the project so that after development is finished, deploying is as painless as possible. The project setup should be close the »real world scenario« it is meant for as possible and I am interested in any kind of hints, advises, links and stuff which guides me setting up the projects.
Which are the pitfalls, where are the »dangerous« parts?
Greetings...
I'd suggest the following route:
Install the Multisite with a sub-domain set-up in a third domain that will be the Main Blog (example.com). In your host, you'll need Wildcard subdomains enabled. Otherwise, each sub-domain has to be manually created. With the wildcard, creating a new site is a matter of clicking Add site.
Then, in /wp-admin/network/sites.php, add two sites: domain1.example.com and domain2.example.com. And develop until they are ready.
You'll need the plugin WordPress MU Domain Mapping to map Top Level Domains to the sub-sites/sub-domains. With it, domain1.example.com will be a fully working domain1.com.
After all this is in place, is just a matter of changing the NameServers to point to the Multisite addresses.
Well, it seems simple but Multisite is not for the faint of the heart. But, one of WordPress.org wizards, Mika Epstein, aka Ipstenu, has two great eBooks that cover lots of ground. Please, check the following Answers in WordPress StackExchange where I cite them.
An interesting case study document.
Plugins of interest:
BackupBuddy: paid solution, although it's considered Beta, exporting and importing sites out and in the networks works ok.
Add Clone Sites for WPMU (batch), in the Repository, although hasn't been updated in a while, still works fine, doesn't exports/imports, but useful for duplicating sites inside the network.

How do I map custom domains to my sites on a multisite Wordpress installation?

I just upgraded one of my many blogs to Wordpress 3.0 and I was glad to see that I now should be able to run all my blogs from a central installation.
I have the multisite stuff configured and up and running, and can create new blogs as I wish.
My host is set up to handle wildcard subdomains, but I'd like to map my already existing, proper domains to sites instead. How do I do this?
Redirecting the domains is not an option.
There's a domain mapping plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/
If you download the dev version, that will work with 3.0, I'm told:
http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/trunk/
There should be a download link at the bottom of that page.
Modrewrite is probably the answer, but without knowing more about the server and how wordpress is doing the multiple blog feature (I use it and have upgraded to 3 as well, but i haven't looked at it very closely), it's hard to give a specific answer.

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