WordPress blog hosted on GoDaddy domain mapping help

[josh-riley]

We set up a WP blog that's hosted through GoDaddy. For various reasons, we purchased a URL to use to get through the technical build and set up and are trying to map that to a subdomain of our company website. (We can't host it on our own server, unfortunately).

My question is: for WP blogs hosted via WP you can buy a domain mapping upgrade and I'm trying to find a similar plugin that could offer the same thing that would apply to our GoDaddy hosting and point to our subdomain (GD apparently doesn't offer the domain mapping).

Anyone have any thoughts, please?

[icecarats]

Isn't this more of a DNS question? Shouldn't it just go:

site.tempurl.com is an alias for newsite.realurl.com?

And then you change the base domain/config in WordPress so it never references tempurl.com ever again?

[josh-riley]

I wish - setting up an alias like that doesn't gel with how WP handles domain mapping. It broke all our links out.

[blacey]

You could always setup a multi-site installation of WordPress and use the following plugin.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping

This should do what you're after, if it doesn't let me know and I can have a think about how we can sort this out for you.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Andrea!

Funny, you just tweeted to me today and then I was assigned to help you out with this question

Anyway, just want to make sure I understand exactly how things are setup to see if your question has been answered.

Is this correct?

• You used www.wordpress.org (not .com) and installed a WP blog on a domain hosted with Go Daddy? In other words, you installed the WP files etc into your Go Daddy hosting account?

• And you want that blog to map to like blog.yourdomain.com ?

Let me know, thanks!

-Dan

[josh-riley]

Dan, small world, indeed! Correct; we tried and ended up in an infinite loop with our Apache system and my web designer has been trying a plug in or two to see if there's a way to map the domain. We seem to be hitting all kinds of random hiccups and as none of us are network admin savvy, I thought this may be a good place for the road less traveled. Thanks for reaching out! Andrea.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Andrea

I've had a quick look, and I think Ben has the right idea by trying that plugin. I found two resources for you to go along with it:

WP Multi Site Domain Mapping <--there's some stuff about GD in the comments

WP 3 Multi Site Installation

I think between the plugin Ben mentioned and those resources, that should get you there.

-Dan

[josh-riley]

Thanks for taking time to follow up and I appreciate you and Ben offering help. I'll work with my designer and report back Cheers, Andrea

[blacey]

Yeah I found that same issue, that's why I went down the route of setting up a MultiSite installation. Hope you can get everything sorted out

[josh-riley]

One last random question, pls: have you had to purchase a dedicated IP if using shared hosting? I think we may need to but before we go making this bigger without promise of it paying off, I thought I'd see if you maybe had run into this and how it may have turned out? Pls.

[blacey]

Hi Andrea,

No I didn't need a dedicated IP address when setting up MultiSite. That being said I 've not installed MultiSite on shared hosting before. I would try installing it and setting it up first on the shared hosting first.

A dedicated IP isn't necessary.

[bronxpad]

Hi Dan,

I know this is an old question but I wanted to ask if using MultiSite and Domain Mapping had any negative impact on search rankings? Or do the search engines treat the mapped domain as a completely unique domain?

Thanks in advance.