Single installation with sub-domains for admin and separate domains for sites

Question

I'd like to use a single installation of wordpress, and achieve the following:

• site.com is the main host site

• other-site1.com

• ...

• other-sitex.com are the other sites and show their fronts. login access should be disabled / prevented - I assume I could do this using the server conf file.

• admin1.site.com

• ...
• adminx.site.com are the admin for the above sites

As far as I understand, I need to use a combination of wordpress multisite for the subdomains, as well as possibly a plugin for the separate domains. Or, could i do some sort of fancy redirect server-side for the urls?

I'd like the accounts to be unique to each subdomain / site if possible, or at worse, granted admin privileges only to specific domains.

Answer 1

First, as you already said, you will need to activate multisite. To do so in your wp-config.php file just before the line that says: /* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */ add define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true ); and then in the WordPress admin, go to Tools >Network Setup then follow the steps to finish installing multisite. Then use this plugin to map the domin names: WordPress MU Domain Mapping

Check out this article for more details and some other plugins to help manage multisites: The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Multisite