How To Create The Best WordPress Multisite With Different Domains?

WordPress hosting is one of the most demanded and used hosting types. If you also prefer working with WordPress, you must be searching for the cheap and best WordPress hosting. Business owners often choose a hosting and CMS that offers high support, easy handling, and user-friendly UI. Along with these features, you should seek wordpress hosting services that are flexible, scalable, and can allow you to upgrade plans at any time.

When you expand your business, you may create multiple websites for promoting/selling different products or services. It is not easy to handle and manage different websites at a time. Using WordPress multisite feature, you can manage updates and other administrative tasks across multiple websites. Rather than managing multiple individual sites, you can create a centralized network on a single WordPress installation. However, WordPress’s default options for subsite domains may need to be revised.

Fortunately, you can quickly set up a WordPress multisite with multiple domains. You can turn your single-site installation into a network by simply adding some code to your site files. Then, you can add new websites and make them unique using domain mapping.

This article will explain why you may want to consider utilizing WordPress multisite. Then, we will demonstrate how to create custom domains for each network subsite. Let’s get started!

What Does WordPress Multisite Mean?

With WordPress Multisite, you can make and manage multiple websites from a single WordPress dashboard. It used to be called WPMU or WordPress Multi-User. The WordPress Multisite feature is not new. It is an advanced feature of WordPress that has been available since WordPress 3.0 came out. You can use it for many things, like updating your websites with one click or charging your subscribers to make a website on your Multisite network.

Who Should Use WordPress Multisite And Who Shouldn’t?

Even though WordPress Multisite has several benefits, it is not always the best option. The biggest concern is that a Multisite network’s websites share a database. To put it another way, you can’t just back up one website. Because of this, every website on a network needs to be a part of the same primary domain.

Here’s an illustration to help you understand the point. A university can use WordPress Multisite to create different websites for each department, teacher and student blogs, and forums. The websites would be simpler to operate on a Multisite network since they would share a database with the university’s primary domain.

Also benefiting from a Multisite network are banks and financial institutions with a national or international network of branches, digital publications with multiple content sections, government agencies with multiple departments, retailers with numerous locations, hotel chains, e-commerce businesses, and website design firms like Wix.

Multisite, however, could not be used by a web designer to coordinate numerous unconnected client projects. Because the website would be sharing its database with other websites on the network, it would be problematic if one of the clients wanted to migrate their website elsewhere. It is challenging to back up a single website on the network due to multisite. In this situation, adopting a single installation would be preferable.

4 Steps To Create A WordPress Multisite With Different Domains

Before migrating your WordPress website to a network, ensure your web host can handle the tasks you need. Choose one of the reliable and cheap wordpress hosting providers that also offers WordPress multisite hosting, which makes it simple to begin managing multiple domains.

When you’re ready to upgrade your hosting, you can cancel your current plan and choose a new one! You’ll find a plethora of options at HostingSeekers. Once you’ve secured a reputable web host, you can begin building a WordPress multisite with multiple domains.

Step 1: Enable WordPress Multisite.

WordPress Multisite is included with the core WordPress software (available at WordPress.org) but is turned off by default. The first step after installing WordPress on your primary domain is to enable WordPress Multisite. You must edit the WordPress configuration file wp-config.php to accomplish this.
The wp-config.php file is typically found in the root directory of your WordPress website. It is accessible via SSH or SFTP.

You can edit the file using an FTP or the File Manager options in the hosting account’s control panel.
Locate the wp-config.php file in your main site’s root directory. Then, just above the line that says stop editing and congratulations on the publication, add the following code.
/* Multisite */
define( ‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true );
Save your changes and re-upload the file to the root folder of your website.
Return to your WordPress admin dashboard after editing the wp-config.php file. Reload the page to ensure that the changes were applied.

Step 2: Configure the Multisite network settings.

Navigate to Tools » Network Setup to configure your multisite installation. Give your multisite network a title and an admin email address. Sub-domains should be selected as ‘Addresses of Sites in your Network.’

To proceed, click Install. WordPress will then prompt you to enter two lines of code. The first snippet should be added to the wp-config.php file in the same way as the previous code.
Add the below-mentioned code to your wp-config.php file as well. It ensures that users can access all of the multisite network’s sites:

define(‘COOKIE_DOMAIN’, $_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’] );

The second line of code should be placed in your WordPress.htaccess file. It is meant to be used in place of the default WordPress.htaccess rules.

Next, return to your WordPress admin dashboard (wp-admin). Locate the My Sites menu item in the admin toolbar. Then select Network Administration » Dashboard.

Step 3: Add multiple domains to your WordPress network

Now is the time to construct a new website with a domain name distinct from your primary domain. In the WordPress administration panel, navigate to Sites » Add New.

Enter information such as Site Address, Site Title, Site language, and the email address of the network administrator. You may enter any string in the Site Address field for the time being since we will subsequently replace it with your domain.

Select Add Site from the menu. Then navigate to Sites > All Sites and click Edit below the newly added website. In the Site Address section on the subsequent screen, enter the custom domain name you desire to assign to this website.

Click Save Changes to complete the process. You may use the same procedure to add more websites with distinct domains to your WordPress multisite network.

Step 4: Add custom domains to your hosting account.

You have added some sites to the network and set custom domains in WordPress. However, the websites will only be reachable via their custom domains. The custom domains still need to point to your hosting servers.

Most modern WordPress hosting companies make adding several domains to your account simple. Using the Managed WordPress hosting from HostingSeekers, you can add custom domains in a few simple clicks.

Step 5: Ensure that SSL certificates are installed.

It is essential to install an SSL certificate for the network’s primary domain and to utilize server name indication (SNI) for other mapped domains. It will assist in securing your multisite network and increase SEO. Google ranks SSL-certified websites higher than other websites in search engine results.
The good news is that the SSL certificate is included by default if you use a hosting provider like HostingSeekers’s WordPress hosting. So there is no need to exert any effort.

That is all. After completing this final step, you can manage all of your WordPress sites with distinct domains from a single admin panel.

Wrapping Up

Creating a WordPress multisite is often an excellent way to organize websites that need more than one subsite. This lets you build a network where themes, plugins, and updates are kept in one place. Even though this might be harder to set up than a single installation, it might be better in the long run.
When building a WordPress multisite, individual websites can be set up as subdomains or subdirectories. You can also make custom domains for each subsite, though. This can help keep your brand’s identity and URLs from getting too long and hard to read.

When you’re ready to move to a multisite, you’ll need a web host to help you through the process. Check out our plans for cheap WordPress hosting to get started managing them.