WPMu Domain Mapping Plugin on CPanel

Well, I have written a bunch about domain mapping on WPMu over the last year or so. Up and until tonight I have been using Richard Bui’s tutorial here along with David Dean’s Multi-Site Manager Plugin. The combination of the two have worked great for me thus far, and I liked that with this combination each mapped domain could act like its own, stand-alone WPMu install—with each domain having the possibility of unlimited dynamic subdomains—a feature I’m not so sure is available with this plugin. That said, you did have to be brave enough to muck around in the database. Well, that was then, this is now. Donncha just released a plugin that brings domain mapping for WPMu to the masses in the form of a simple, easy-to-use plugin. Is Donncha on a roll or what? Last month it was the Sitwewide Tags Plugin (though it’s much more than the name suggests) which kicks major ass. This week it is the Domain Mapping Plugin, which is for many the Holy Grail for WPMu admins. So, I just got around to testing it out on a WPMu install that uses [[CPanel]], and it is actually pretty painless, though not entirely automated. Keep in mind this will only work with installations that have sub-domains setup, no love for sub-directories just yet. Here is how I got it to work with CPanel: After you install the plugin you will find the Domain Mapping subtab under the Manage tab. Once you're there you will see the following: The logic here is simple, each WPMu blog will have access to this subtab once the plugin is installed. If someone has a blog on your system and they have a domain they want to map, they would need to do two things: 1) From where ever they purchased their domain, they would need to point their domain to the nameservers of the WPMu install. For example, if your WPMu install was hosted on Bluehost, they would need to point them to NS1.BLUEHOST.COM AND NS2.BLUEHOST.COM. 2) After that, they will need to go to the Manage–>Domain Mapping tab and specify the IP address of the WPMu site and have them put in their domain. (You can decide how you want to share the IP address with them.) That’s it on their end, pretty simple. But on the admin end there is one more step if you are using CPanel. You need to create an addon domain for the mapped domain and point it to the directory with the WPMu installation. For me it looked like this: You can see that the domain is added normally, but the document root is changed to point to the actual directory with the WPMu installation. After that, it works like a charm. Now, this was simple and awesome, and for folks who aren’t using CPanel it will probably work automatically once someone points their domain to the correct IP address. But with CPanel there is one extra step, and while a relatively easy one, it does rule out strict automation of the mapped domains. But, the upside is that at the end of the day even I can map domains with out hacking Apache settings or putting our WPMu install in imminent danger. Disco! So, can UMW Blogs map domains now? Well, I gues we can now, can’t we