Wordpress Multisite on Local vhost won't load domain-based sites

Question

I've set up a Wordpress Multisite on my Local Mac, and also set up an Apache Virtual Host (e.g http://maindomain.dev) to point to the directory. The Multisite used to be a Directory Based install (e.g http://maindomain.dev/subdirectory), but I read that you convert it to a Domain Based install by changing the value of define('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false); to define('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true); and then updating the .htaccess file. I did all of this, and Wordpress appears to work fine. However, when I create a new site and try to access it (e.g http://subdomain.maindomain.dev), the browser (Chrome) just hangs for a while and then times out.

I read somewhere that a Wordpress Multisite domain-based install can't be installed locally, but it should work with an Apache Virtual Host, but I can't remember the URL for that page.

Can anyone help me out?

Answer 1

I got this working, eventually. Steps to get it working:

Add the subdomain.maindomain.dev to your hosts file (on a Mac, it's located at /etc/hosts), next to your 127.0.0.1 localhost maindomain.dev. Your hosts file should look like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost maindomain.dev subdomain.maindomain.dev subdomain2.maindomain.dev

Of course, you can have other entries in your hosts file as well. But this needs to be located somewhere (preferably at the top). Also, putting all your entries for 127.0.0.1 radically speeds up loading time for vhosts.

Next, open httpd-vhosts.conf (located at /etc/apache2/extra) and where your Virtual Host has been defined, add ServerAlias *.maindomain.dev. The Virtual Host declaration should look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/path/to/folder"
    ServerName maindomain.dev
    ServerAlias *.maindomain.dev
</VirtualHost>

restart Apache using apachectl -k restart (you may need to add sudo before this command).

The only problem with this is that each time you create a new Site using Wordpress Multisite, you have to define it in your hosts file.

I hope this helps anyone who has the same or similar problem to me! :)