WordPress 3.0 Walkthrough: Multsite
Multisite is the most talked about new feature in WordPress 3.0 – the WordPress team has folded the functionality of WordPress Multiuser into the main WordPress project. So how do you use it?
This tutorial assumes your are comfortable using FTP clients such as Filezilla and doing basic edits of WordPress files.
1. Download WordPress 3.0 release candidate. You can find it here.
2. Edit wp-config in your favorite text editor and add the following line:
define(‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true);
(I’d suggest adding it just above the line “// ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //”)
3. Install WordPress normally
NOTE: If you’ve already installed WordPress 3.0, just edit wp-config and add that line of code, there’s no need to re-install.
4. Under Tools on the sidebar, you’ll now have an “Network” option. Click it.
5. Here you’ll setup your “Network” – a Network is all the blogs or sites you’ll have under your WordPress install (if you’re migrating back to WordPress from WordPress Multiuser this might be confusing. In WordPress Multiuser the term for network was “site” and the term for site was “blog.” Explanation here).
If your host supports it, you’ll have the option here to choose between subdomains and subdirectories.
Example of a subdomain: site1.yourdomain.com
Example of a subdirectory: yourdomain.com/site1
Fill out your Network Title and Admin E-mail Address and press install.
6. You’ll be greeted with your next list of steps: creating a blogs.dir directory, editing wp-config.php, and .htaccess. WP recommends, as do I, backing up wp-config.php and .htaccess files before proceeding.
After completing the steps, you’ll need to log back into WordPress.
7. On your next login, you’ll notice a new menu: “Super Admin.”
8. Click “Sites” under this option to create a new site. Fill out the forms accordingly.
9. After creating a new site, click Users. You’ll see a new user was created for the new site.
10. You can control all sites on your network through the Super Admin menu, but for right now you might find it easier to administer individual sites through their own admin menus. You can access them as you would a normal wordpress site. In the example above, it would be: http://mydomain.net/malta/wp-admin
