WordPress Multisite: How To for Beginners

I’ve been struggling to setup WordPress MultiSite. The few times I tried to follow tutorials online, I was thrown off because they all referered to dealing with an FTP program, which I’ve never used and know little about. I called upon the help of more experienced friends but our schedules haven’t allowed for any progress so I’m now determined to figure this out and create a tutorial for beginners.

For starters, if you are not using an FTP client, you will have to access your File Manager through cPanel which you have access to through your web host (my webhost is Bluehost).

cPanel --> File Manager. Find the file named ‘wp-config.php’, click on it and from the top menu choose ‘Edit’, as per below:

Once ‘wp-config.php’ is open and ready for edit, all you have to do is paste in the following code

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

You can paste it anywhere but I would recommend placing it above ‘// **MySQL settings…’, as per below:

Once you have done that, you should be able to access the network page from Tools » Network.

To do this, log in to your Wordpress account, click on Tools in the left-hand sidebar and then click on Network Setup.

After you define the name of your network step-by-step instruction will appear to help you create the network within your WordPress account, as per below:

For Step 1: You will need to create a directory within your ‘wp-content file’. To do this, go back into your File Manager in cPanel and locate ‘wp-content’ in the left-hand breakdown of folders. Double-click on ‘wp-content’ and you will see the folders contained within it. In the top menu you will see a New Folder icon – click this and a box will appear, as per below:

Make sure your New Folder is being created in: ‘/public_html/wp-content’

For Step 2: You will need to go back into your File Manager in cPanel and double-click on ‘public_html’ on the left-hand side. Find ‘wp-config’, click on it and choose ‘edit’ from the top menu, like above.

You will need to paste and save the following above ‘/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */’:

define( 'MULTISITE', true );
define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false );
$base = '/';
define( 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'www.makingjgb.com' );
define( 'PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' );
define( 'SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
define( 'BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );

For Step 3: I recommend going back to your cPanel and clicking on File Manager. The following menu should pop up and you will have to check the box entitled ‘Show Hidden Files (dotfiles)’ and press Go.

You will now be able to locate the file ‘.htaccess’ in ‘public_html’. Click on this file name and click Edit on the top menu bar.

Add the following between ‘# BEGIN WordPress’ and ‘# END WordPress’, as per below:

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]

If there is any code above ‘# BEGIN WordPress’, it can be deleted.

Once you have completed all these steps, you will have to log out of WordPress and log in again.

You should now be able to access you Network! As per the image below, you can find your Network Admin in the pulldown menu on the top right-hand side portion of your WordPress Dashboard:

You did it! You can now create multiple sites within your main blog! If you have any troubleshooting questions, please do not hesitate to contact me!

Sites that were useful to me in the process of figuring all this out:

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2010/06/02/wordpress-3-multisite/
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-enable-multi-site-option-in-wordpress-3-0/

Note: If you read through tutorials as above and find that you don’t understand some of the terminology, I recommend you Google search specifically what you don’t understand! Such as: ‘How to open wp-config.php’. It can also be useful to read other users troubleshooting comments.