Articles in this section

See more

How to set up a WordPress multisite on the Plesk server?

Avatar
Maxim Krasikov
Updated
Follow

Applicable to:

  • Plesk Onyx for Linux
  • Plesk Onyx for Windows

Question

How to set up a WordPress multisite on the Plesk server?

Answer

Note: It is recommended to set up a network on a fresh WordPress deployment, since enabling multisite on a production website might cause some problems.

1. Creation of a WordPress webspace

  1. Log into Plesk.

  2. Create a new subscription in Home > Subscriptions > Add Subscription.

  3. Install a WordPress instance for the subscription in Home > Subscriptions > example.com > Install WordPress.

2. Configuring multisite WordPress network

  1. Log into the WordPress instance as an administrator in Home > WordPress > example.com > Log in.

  2. Go to Tools > Network Setup and configure the network to have sites on separate sub-domains.

  3. Follow the instruction and update and update wp-config.php and .htaccess files in Plesk > Subscriptions > example.com > File Manager.

    Note: If FPM by nginx is set as PHP handler or website uses nginx only configuration use the following article to add addtional nginx directives:
    What are nginx rewrite rules for WordPress multisite?

  4. Relogin to the WordPress instance as an administrator in Home > WordPress > example.com > Log in.

  5. Go to My Sites > Network Admin > Sites and create additional sites in your WordPress network.

    For example:

    • example-net.example.com
    • example-org.example.com
    • example-us.example.com

    These subdomains will be remapped later.

3. Configuring WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin

  1. Install WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin.

  2. Plesk > Subscriptions > example.com > File Manager and copy file sunrise.php from wp-content/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/ to wp-content/ directory.

  3. Relogin to the WordPress instance as an administrator in Home > WordPress > example.com > Log in.

  4. Go to My Sites > Network Admin > Settings > Domain Mapping.

  5. Open wp-config.php in Plesk > Subscriptions > example.com > File Manager and add the following line before require_once in the end of the file:

    CONFIG_TEXT: define( 'SUNRISE', 'on' );

  6. Specify the site IP-Address or CNAME in the corresponding field.

  7. Go to Settings > Domains and define domain-site mappings, using site IDs and domain names using. For example:

    • example.net
    • example.org
    • example.us

    Site ID can be seen in the URL when you hover your mouse over the site name (Step 5) of the previous section.

    Leave Primary checkbox selected, otherwise WordPress will redirect visitors from a domain to the subdomain it is mapped to.

Additional information can be found below:

WordPress MU Domain Mapping instruction

At this point, multisite set up on the WordPress side is complete. Now, it is time to create these additional websites on the Plesk side. There are two ways to do this. It is possible to mix-and-match these approaches - all of them will work together:

Creating additional sites in the Plesk

Create additional domains under current webspace/subscription and point their document root to the document root of the main website (i.e. /httpdocs). It gives more flexibility in terms of website settings for every site and allows to purchase separate SSL certificate for each domain.

  1. Press Add Domain in Plesk > Subscriptions > example.com.

  2. Specify new domain example.net with Document root of the main domain (i.e. /httpdocs).

Configuring a default virtual host

  1. Go to Tools & Settings > IP addresses > <IP Address>.

  2. Select WordPress website example.com as the default website for this IP address.

In this case, it is not required to create any additional domain in Plesk - as long as other site names are resolving to the same IP address, web server will use the WordPress website as a default destination for any request that comes to this IP address. However, SSL certificate for the main website must include all domains added to the multisite network.

Warning: Plesk WordPress Toolkit extension treats multisite installations as a typical single-site deployment. Specifically:

  • WordPress Toolkit will display WordPress installation, plugins, and themes on the main website of the network only.
  • Plugins and themes installed via WordPress Toolkit must be “network activated” from WordPress admin dashboard.

Comments

7 comments

Sort by Date Votes
  • Avatar
    Chris Fogarty

    Great guide thank you and it almost worked perfectly. For my situation it required using 3. (Set the main website as default virtual host on the IP address) but then I also needed to create a wildcard webspace to get this to work. The wildcard webspace matches the wildcard CName record I created with my DNS manager. (Just sharing in case it helps anyone else)

    0
    Permalink
  • Avatar
    webmaster (Edited )

    A couple of things if you please. We just stood up up two new 17.8 Onyx boxes - pretty much done, pushing a new sites now.

    One brand new wordpress install - went through config and htaccess steps to set it up multisite - that's working as I can see the tables being added when I add a site / make mods, have the users / themes / settings tabs all appearing fine under the subsites. I can sometime get to their dashboards, sometimes not and when going to a subsite url, the main site appears. 

    1) I don't see the top panel in your example, esp. "Webspaces" - and I cannot get the subsites to function correctly as separate domains per your instructions (domainA.com - domainB.com). I have the main site just setup as a simple domain, set as the default site on a shared IP - but it was setup as a domain and NOT a webspace (again, I'm not seeing that in 17.8.) I'm on Ubuntu 16.04 if that matters.

    Could not having this setup initially as a WEBSPACE be part of the issue? Do I need to setup AllowOverride All for the directory in our Apache configs or something?... I had a multisite working on Plesk 12.5 ok but have spent hours on this puppy to no avail.

    0
    Permalink
  • Avatar
    Jan van der Mei

    Hi there,

    This document has been altered to allow for WP 4.5+ installs. However you state "Don't be confused by the fact, that you're configuring them as subdomains - you'll remap them later" Where do we do this now? Originally I would use the WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin. Thanks in advance.

    0
    Permalink
  • Avatar
    Bato Tsydenov

    @webmaster

    Most probably the root cause of the issue is that you are using Service Provider View. In this view there are no such items like Webspace. There are Subscriptions instead.

    And when you created additional domains I suppose they were created in separate subscriptions.

    In this case, you should create additional domains under one subscription. For example:

    1. Create a subscription example.com in Plesk

    2. Go to Subscriptions > example.com

    3. Add the domains(i.e. example.net, example.org, etc.) under this subscription by clicking Add Domain button

    I have modified the article to make it clearer. Thank you for your feedback.

    0
    Permalink
  • Avatar
    Bato Tsydenov

    @Jan van der Mei

    I have checked this in test environment.

    Indeed, Domain mapping tool is not included in Wordpress version 4.9.8. It is necessary to install the WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin.

    The article has been modified.

    Thank you for pointing this out.

    0
    Permalink
  • Avatar
    mirko

    But if I Create additional sites in the Plesk and point their document root to the document root of the main website if I delete the additional site it delete the main root document of main website...

    1
    Permalink
  • Avatar
    Alexandr Zubtsovsky

    @mirko
    Hi!
    On Plesk Onyx 17.8 if the user removes additional website with docroot set as "/httpdocs" the directory of the main site ("httpdocs") will not be removed.

    0
    Permalink

Please sign in to leave a comment.

Have more questions? Submit a request

Related articles