What is with the one month time limit for sub directory installs for multisite network?

Question

http://codex.wordpress.org/Before_You_Create_A_Network

If you scroll down to the bottom you see:

You cannot choose Sub-directory Install (for a path-based network) if your existing WordPress installation has been set up for more than a month, due to issues with existing permalinks. (This problem will be fixed in a future version. See Switching network types for more information.)

I believe that this is causing some of the permalink issues I am facing here. But I would like to understand why there is a one month time limit and what they are doing to fix it. For instance the permalink issues I am having - I definitely notice that the newer WP installs that I have on my server are not having issues while the older ones are. What the $%%**% is happening at the one month time period that is "locking" permalinks?

Answer 1

There is nothing happening at one month, and nothing "locks" permalinks. There is no actual difference in the system, the only difference is in the initial multisite configuration interface.

When you first define WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE to true, and visit the network screen, you get the initial setup menu which lets you set up the configuration. It looks much like this here: http://codex.wordpress.org/File:network-create.png

On that screen, if you have had your installation single site longer than 1 month, then it won't let you pick a "subdirectory" setup.

And that's it. That's the only difference.

In the end, it doesn't actually matter. It's going to give you some defines to add to the config file anyway, and if you tell it subdomain = false, then it will be subdirectory.

What are they doing to fix that? Why, nothing at all. This is intentional and part of the system. If you override it, then it works fine anyway. In the long run, the difference between subdirectory and subdomain should disappear anyway with domain mapping support, but this is purely an interface thing to prevent people from accidentally doing something stupid and breaking their site.

This in no way relates to your other question, because you are not using multisite.