For the last 24 hours I have been working with Donncha’s Domain Mapper plugin with my Multisite. Granted, this hasn’t been officially made for WP 3.0 Multisite as yet, but the process is pretty much the same.
To explain what domain mapping is: Unlike a standard WordPress site, the WordPress MU or WordPress 3.0 Multisite is the ability to have multiple instance of blogs via a single installation of WordPress. All of your blogs / user logins & information are retained and managed under a single installation. The benefits of this include everything from less processor/memory usage (if you have multiple blogs on a single hosting) to having everything integrated between all of your sites to share data.
When a blog on WPMU or Multisite is created you can either set it up as a subdomain, like boxed.frumph.net, or as a subdirectory structure like frumph.net/boxed. The most appropriate way is the subdomain model, but for those that do not have the DNS wildcard capability through their hosting they can still opt for the subdirectory method.
What Domain Mapping does is ‘remap’ those subdirectory or subdomain URLs to domains that you own. For example, webcomicawards.com remaps to webcomicawards.frumph.net, so that when someone goes to webcomicawards.com they are literally going literally to the actual site that is managed by the WPMU or Multisite.
Backstory
My MultSite, and others that I have set up (including shivae.net), have had TONS of issues with massive redirects and SQL calls ‘per page load’ that can overwhelm the database and cause data to be lost on forms being sent through the redirects. Searching the code I have discovered several interesting things.
Techie Stuff
When removing the domain_mapper.php from the mu-plugins folder, setting the mapped domain with the proper blog ID in the domain_mapping table and setting the wpurl, siteurl and fileupload_url to the new mapped domain, I did *not* need the domain_mapper.php at all. Although I still used the sunshine.php file for it to properly map, the rest was *not needed*.
Removing all of the redirects and extra filters from that particular plugin being used fixed any issues that were occurring with the overloading of the server through redirects and SQL calls.
So I spent the morning basically fiddling with it as you can read here: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/389581.
That’s when I started talking to others in the community and was directed to this plug-in: http://wpmututorials.com/simple-multi-site-plugin-e-book/ which, if you read the support topic I posted about above, you will notice how I determined that Donncha’s plugin was…..well, I don’t know, not exactly what I had in mind for what the plugin should actually do. However, the one from WPMU Tutorials is more or less exactly how I envisioned a domain mapper should behave.
Pros and Cons of both
Donncha’s Domain Mapping plugin
Pros:
- Made by Donncha, @donncha on twitter. Widely accepted as a leader in the WP community and programming expert.
- Excellent interface and user understanding on how an end user should utilize the plugin.
- Allows blog creators to map their own domains.
- It’s free.
Cons:
- It’s bulky, uses redirects to do the mapping and the extra SQL calls to achieve that (I do not know for what purpose it serves to do it that way).
- Version 0.5.1 erm…..has some backdoors or what *appear* to be backdoors with the $_GET and $_SERVER calls being used before being prepared/escaped.
- Getting an “Unknown Login Key” error which makes it not usable with Multisite.
WPMU Tutorials Domain Mapper
Pros:
- It maps the domain without needing redirects and extra SQL calls.
- Made by Ron Rennick(sp?) aka @wpmuguru on Twitter. The guy is ALWAYS helpful, and I mean ALWAYS there to help with ideas on proper coding – pure genius.
Cons:
- Interface needs serious work.
- Does not allow users to map their own domains, the administration of this plugin is only on the main site’s backend.
- The add/edit/remove administration could be a bit easier to understand.
- It costs $$ to buy.
Conclusion
I would use, and am using, the domain mapping plugin now from WPMU Tutorials, the cost of the plugin outweighs the necessity of having the domain not have the excessive redirects and SQL calls. I do hope, however, that they make it prettier and send out updates to all of the people who have purchased it.
– Phil
Discussion (14) ¬
I have a multi domain plugin for WP3.0 called WP Multi Network. It’s a modified version of an existing domain mapping plugin updated for WP3.0 with an interface designed to fit right in with the rest of the WordPress admin area. I’d live for you to tear it apart and compare it with these heavy hitters. 🙂
That being said, I think Ron’s will probably be better; his beard makes him a super WP ninja. 🙂
Sure =) would love to get a crack of it. philip@frumph.net
That and he’s a young grandpa, beard ninja grandpa power HO!
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-multi-network/ 😀
I was very enthusiastic about multisite and multi network. I adapted those into my new WP installation. After playing with the installation for a while, I came to the conclusion that multisite or multi network isn’t that good thing. It has much more cons than pros, as seen below. What do you think? Do you agree?
Pros:
– Mass installation of plugins is easy
– Updating is easy, making all sites more up to date and secure
– Some settings can be copied during installation of a new network
Cons:
– All sites are stored into a one database, extraction of a site is hard / impossible
– If you need to debug one of you sites, all are showing debug info during the inspection
– Problem in the core system or in a single plugin can crash all networks and sites
– Problem in the multi network plugin may cause networks to disappear
– Data security problems: implementation of the multi network plugin, shared configuration (salt etc.), .htaccess
– Not every plugin support multisite
=> Multisite or -network comes truly feasible only when you have to host way over 10 sites. Or you have a network of sites tied really closely together.
PS. Thanks for the great article 🙂
I find, (personally) that 3+ sites benefit greatly from using Multisite., but hosting may vary.
You’re con’s are also my +’s
“Problem in the core system or in a single plugin can crash all networks and sites.”
– But the pro to that is that you don’t have to keep dealing with the same issues on all the single installations.
“All sites are stored into a one database, extraction of a site is hard / impossible”
– tools -> export, will still export individual sites, and phpmyadmin – admin tools for mysql can still export full databases
“If you need to debug one of you sites, all are showing debug info during the inspection”
– Not if you do it right ;/ All your sites do not have to have the same theme, it’s usual for memory sure, but doesn’t have to be.
“Data security problems: implementation of the multi network plugin, shared configuration (salt etc.), .htaccess”
– Not an issue.
“Not every plugin support multisite”
– Any plugin made within the last year that utilizes the correct $db coding does
but, it’s all good
1. What specifically in the interface for Ron’s plugin do you feel is a problem? I use it and have had my own thoughts on improvements, but I’d be curious about your issues. Since it’s a site/super-admin only plugin, I haven’t worried about it too much since it works so well.
2. The really great thing about these two plugins is that they serve two different business needs. Donncha’s works better for a self-service environment while Ron’s works better for a managed environment where it needs the ability to map domains but shouldn’t be a free-for-all. So it’s not really a pro/con issue for that so much as a business use-case.
3. Ron has contributed quite a bit to Donncha’s in the last update. Great synergies with open source there!
1) Visually the interface is very ‘developer’ mode and not end user. It works because you are familiar with it, however as a new user I found it could be better reworked. Couple buttons for [add][delete] would probably solve that maybe a little jquery opening up a dialog box in the appropriate place for the add. .. cleaned up a bit.
2) Underlying they serve the same function to map a domain to an instance. There’s no denying that. The way they work however is different. If an interface was added to Ron’s that allowed member-owned blogs to make their own mod to their own blog that would be nice. To say that they serve different business needs is just trying to find a reason for a fault. A plugin like this should be written to handle whatever case instance the user needs without needing another plugin to coincide with it.
3) Ron’s just that type of guy. He’s contributed the the ComicPress project on several occasions and always has an ear out to correct my programming =)
re:#2 – actually, we wrote it specifically for a different use-case, just for those site where a) the site admin was managing a handful of their own domains or b) the site admin was managing the domains for paying clients and also wanted to hide the sub-domains.
I don’t see it as a fault-finding at all, it clearly is a separate use-case cuz that’s why we made it this way. 😀 while we could give the option to do ti one way or the other, a huge bonus is if you mess up the settings, you have an admin area to fix things. if you mes up Donncha’s from the backend, you need to go wade in the database.
In fact, if people tell us they want to map domain the way wp.com does it, and they wan to have the subdomain available, we tell them to go use D’s.
The reality is, for the way we did the admin area, it can save someone a good hour or two in the time is takes to map domains. More than pays for itself, especially for businesses.
Heh I realize that after you discussed it with me on the chat, however .. since you do sell it, I feel that you should make it more wider accessible then a single purpose like that. To be able to handle someone who would want to use it for user-blog owned individuals.
p.s. I really like the gravatar frames here. 😀
And I think it’s obvious we really like working with Donncha on stuff.
the gravatar frames are a part of my theme tricks plugin, which was seriously written bad.. i should update that someday