If you’d like you can start from an exiting site, but if you have the opportunity it’s a good idea to do a little planning before you begin.
1. Create a directory.
wpmultisite1
(usually under the www or public_html dirctory)
We start with the number 1 since we know that once you get started with WPMultiSite and find out how easy it is to setup a new site you’ll start making lots of these directories. In theory you can keep piling site on this one directory, but soon you’ll find it more useful to group sites together by type. At that point you might start naming directories by type i.e wpmultisite-blog, wpmultisite-cms, wpmultisite-portfolio, etc.
2. Install WordPress in this directory
Don’t use your hosts “1 click installer”. This is to avoid any version update notices. WordPress now has it’s own updater which most scripts don’t know about, so these installers are trying to do you a service of informing you that there is an update available even though your site is already up to date, which ends up just being a pain.
Don’t use the default configuration for any of your domains. That is only use WPMultiSite to add domains. You’ll want to do some configuration on the default (or base installation). You can access the base install by using the sub domain that the control panel configured for you. For example.
wpmultisite1.mydomain.com
In the wp admin area of the base install, name the site Default and use the default theme. This is very useful to make sure an added domain is mapped correctly. If you make a typo or something in WPMultiSite is not right, then this default site will show up, making it obvious that there is something wrong with the WPMultiSite entry allowing you to correct the problem quickly.
You do need to go though the regular configuration process and setup the database, but just name the site “Default”. Set permalink to anything you want. Remember all sites must use permalinks or none of them can.
3. Install WPMultiSite or WPMultiSite Lite
4. Map domains or subdomains to this directory after you setup the domain with WPMultiSite.
Here is what a typical directory structure looks like:
