FORCE WORDPRESS TO ALLOW SUBDIRECTORY BLOGS - Free Websites, Share News And Posts Publicly

During the activation of Multi Site a few lines of code need to be added to wp-confg.php. One of those lines states:

define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true );

That line tells WordPress to use subdomain addon sites.

Change it to

define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false );

and you will now be able to create subdirectory sites.

Currently, WordPress messes around with subdirectory site URLs. It adds a /blog/ slug after the TLD. For example, if a subdirectory site is created with the name “apple” such that its URL should be

http://domain.tld/apple

then WordPress renames it

http://domain.tld/blog/apple

Now that does not look very professional. In fact, it looks pretty damn ugly. Thankfully, the “blog” slug can be removed. A plugin is available from ThinkingWordPress (direct link) which does just that – it removes the ugly “blog” slug.

Table of Contents

THERE ARE TWO SNAGS WITH ALL THIS

Forcing WordPress to allow subdirectory addon sites on old WordPress installations has a price:

Subdirectory sites that resemble existent post, page, tag, category or directory names must not be created,
Some subdirectory sites will not display as they should because of conflicts with the main site’s permalink URL structure.

The solution for the first issue is simple:

Do not create addon sites with names the same as existent WordPress slugs.

The second problem is characterized by any of

Subdirectory sites do not display when viewed
Subdirectory sites display but their themes are corrupt (missing CSS files)
Subdirectory site backend admin panels redirect to the main site’s admin panel

Other symptoms will probably exist also.

The solution is simple and involves changing the Multi Site’s URL rewrite rules.

Edit your .htaccess file and replace

# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]

# uploaded files
RewriteRule ^files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

# END WordPress

With

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

# uploaded files
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$2 [L]

# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ $1wp-admin/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule  ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $1 [L]
RewriteRule  ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(.*\.php)$ $1 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

And that is all there is to forcing WordPress to allow subdirectory addon site installations when Multi Site is enabled.

THE BLOG SLUG

WordPress will insist on inserting a blog slug into the sub-directory URLs such that my-blog.tld/site-one/my-post will look like my-blog.tld/blog/site-one/my-post. This can be removed with the Remove Blog Slug plugin from here.

157 COMMENTS

Oldest

David

12 years ago

Hi, thanks so much for this, its been so helpful and I am so close to solving my multisite problems. I have followed everything you wrote and managed to get my second site to work as a subdirectory (/dj/), I can add pages in the admin, but when I come to view them it throws a 404.

Basically I am trying to view “http://quirksmode.dev/dj/” and my error is saying “You tried going to http://quirksmode.dev/dj/dj/ and it doesn’t exist.”

For some reason it is duplicating /dj/ do you have any ideas how I may solve this?

David

12 years ago

It’s all good, I fixed it. I had a remove category base plugin that needed to be disabled and reactivated to kick in. Thanks so much, you are a legend!!

One last thing, I don’t suppose you know a plugin that allows me to move posts/pages from one site to another within my network?

THERE ARE TWO SNAGS WITH ALL THIS

THE BLOG SLUG

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