I am considering converting a client project from a large number of hand-built web pages to a WordPress install. However, this client has a free area (site.com/) and a members area (site.com/members/). The members area is standard Apache .htaccess / htpasswd authentication. The authentication is handled by legacy billing software which we don't want to change at this time.
One thought is to put up two separate WordPress installs (or perhaps a MultiSite install?). One install sits on the domain root and the other sits at /members/. Thus neither install has to know anything about being password-protected. So long as the outer install cannot generate a url which includes /members/, I'm pretty sure the url-rewrite engines won't interfere with each other.
Another thought is to try to do everything in a single install, and expect the server to force authentication on any url that maps to /members/. But intuitively it feels like I'd have to go to a custom taxonomy to get "free area" category hierarchies separate from "member area" hierarchies.
Any WordPress plugins which I've found, and any related discussions, assume that the members are managed via WordPress. That's the issue: the members area is simply protected via old-school htaccess authentication.
I'm not sure that the WordPress url-rewrite mechanism would trigger the authentication part as intended, given that WordPress is sitting at the domain root, outside the members area.
On the other hand, running it as two WordPress installs, one inside the other, might be just what I need. Anyone have perspective on this? Anyone know of problems running WordPress "inside" WordPress as described?
Yes. Given my restrictions, a double install is the most reasonable solution.
Related
the company I work for currently owns two domains, e.g.:
example.com
another-example.com
I manage the WordPress installations, which run on those domains (two distinct installations with separate themes, plugins, webspaces, databases, ftp, etc.), in my free time as they always come up with challenging requirements which helps me improve my skills (and because the company is really nice to me in general).
They've asked me if it was possible to redirect another-example.com to example.com/another and display everything from the second WordPress installation under that URL.
For example the main page of another-example.com should be displayed under example.com/another, the subpage another-example.com/about-us should be displayed under example.com/another/about-us and so on.
All the WordPress pages of example.com should continue to work as they are now ("another" would in reality a word which would never be used as subpage of the main domain, so that won't ever be an issue). Basically they just want the browser to display example.com/another instead of another-example.com for "tracking, SEO and usability" (I didn't question that... 😅).
I just wanted to know whether this is possible or not.
One idea that came to my mind was to setup example.com as WordPress multisite installation and run another-example.com as subsite of that multisite on /another. Though I'm not very familiar with multisite, I blieve this is how it could work and it surely isn't to hard to migrate a normal WordPress installation to become a subsite of a multisite. I'm familiar with databases so worst case is I have to do some manual labor if it isn't already possible out of the box by using some backup plugin or so.
But I was thinking that maybe it is possible by changing some settings in the webservers. It's just that Apache HTTP servers aren't really my world at all and even though I tried to understand the configs multiple times over the last decade, I never did and I have no clue how that would work (if it is possible at all).
So my question is: Is it possible to achieve this by configuring the webserver and if so, can you also provide a working config we could use?
I'm also open to better suggestions than the two I thought about. Maybe theres something easier and better to achieve this goal.
Thanks in advance
Jan
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/
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.
we have a VPS for new site development, and were planning on using unique IP addresses for each new site/account so that while in development all links, URLs, etc. would be relative to the root (IP address) while in development and not need to change when going live (redirecting domain). But now our host won't allow us to purchase new IP addresses (according to worldwide shortage).
So now all new sites will be located at: http://shared.ip.add.ress/~cpanelaccount/. That means that while in development the sites are not using a root URL as we have been doing.
What is the best workflow while in development for relatively complex CMS solutions where we need to be able to confidently setup and test all links, SEF URLs, plugins, components, etc. without worrying about things getting messed up when the domain is switched (site goes live)?
Do we need to do some sort of global redirect in the .htaccess file?
Any modifications or strategies specific to Wordpress and/or Joomla installs?
THANKS!
I'd have to do an install of the latest WP to be sure, but at least with Joomla it is fairly irrelevant if you install in the root or a subdirectory. In the case of Joomla, there is only one change that needs to be made when moving from a subdirectory to the root. You'd need to change .htaccess to reflect the correct installation directory if you have enabled core SEF. Otherwise, there are no changes that need to be made at all. I am pretty sure WP is just as easy to move, but I'd have to look, it's been a while since I moved a WP site.
I have a my main site, called "mysite.com" (for arguments sake). On this site, you will find my blog and everything I do. But I am starting another site that I want to run on my domain. However:
The other site must have it's down domain name: newsite.com
If people go to mysite.com/newsite it must redirec to newsite.com
If people go to newsite.com, it must show the content of what they would see if they had gone to mysite.com/newsite in the past
So basically, I want a "page" or actually a whole section ( mysite.com/newsite/* ) to appear as newsite.com in the browser.
Why?
I want both sites to run off one drupal installation
I want both sites to look basically the same
However, keep in mind that I don't want to use a multi-drupal solution. i.e. a module that allows for more than one copy of drupal to run off 1 installation.
http://drupal.org/project/domain allows you to configure various things based on the domain, for example accessible nodes.
You can probably do the redirect with a Rewrite Rule, outside of Drupal or write a simple module that does that.
Sounds simple to do. Just install the second site using a regular multi-site installation. (Google "drupal multi-site instructions"). Then install the Path redirect module and create the external redirect to the new domain. http://drupal.org/project/path_redirect