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.

I have used WooThemes in the past and personally I think some of their code and their modifications are a bit overkill, sure it makes things easier for users but its not really following the way WordPress does things (Creating folders in WP-Content to put file uploads from their admin panel for example).

In general terms I think its better to hard code references to public resources (CSS Links, JavaScript links etc in header.php). For better speed increases I would suggest having links to JQuery or MooTools in header.php and any other JavaScript files should be put in footer.php just above the closing body tag.

The benefit to this is that the core JavaScript framework (JQuery or MooTools) is loaded first, the page can then render on the screen whilst the last few JS files are downloaded and put to use.

It maty be worth using WP SuperCache or similar to cache your pages and allow browser gzip compression for quicker page loading.

I think WordPress in general makes too many database calls anyway, so where possible I think its acceptable to hard code links.

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

For you to use Site A as its own entity again I would suggest cancelling the 301 redirect as you've said, creating all the pages for Site A, making sure they're optimised on-page with good internal links to the other pages,

Once that's been done, generate an XML sitemap and submit that to Google, Bing, Yahoo etc

Then its just a waiting game for the search engines to update their index with the new pages on Site A.

I've just found this after some searching on Google and (I know its from 2009) but some of the points in the article seem logical. Out the box WordPress (for instance) will add a forward-slash at the end of the URL and I know a few other CMS's do this as well.

One thing I would say is that if you're working on a back-linking campaign (which I fully recommend investing some time in doing btw) then you would want to link to the URL with the end forward slash in the URL, even for the homepage (http://www.domain.com/). If memory serves me right if you access your page with the forward-slash on the end the web server knows your linking to a folder and not a file so it does one less lookup when serving up the page (making the initial request a little bit quicker).

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/linking-issues-why-a-trailing-slash-in-the-url-does-matter/13021/

Hi Luke,

Glad you appreciated the above .htaccess rules, hopefully that will help.

I think file extensions should only be used for anything that isn't .php, .asp, .html etc.

If nothing else it gives you the freedom to change the underlying technology of the site without having to change all the indexed pages in Google using a 301 redirect.

For instance, if I had: www.domain.com/page1.html then it would be better to have this as www.domain.com/page1/

If I had a file it would be best to keep that as: www.domain.com/files/myfile.pdf without the forward-slash at the end.

You could always force a trailing slash using .htaccess even if someone visits the page without the end slash. Something like this might work, if it doesn't, let me know and I'll get something working for you.

<code>RewriteEngine  On  # Assuming you're running at domain root.  Change to working directory if needed.  RewriteBase  /   # www check  # If you're running in a subdirectory, then you'll need to add that in  # to the redirected url (http://www.mydomain.com/subdirectory/$1  RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  !^www\.  [NC]  RewriteRule  ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]  #  # Trailing slash check  # Don't fix direct file links  RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_FILENAME}  !-f RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !(.*)/$ RewriteRule  ^(.*)$ $1/  [L,R=301]    # Finally, forward everything to your front-controller (index.php)  RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_FILENAME}  !-f RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_FILENAME}  !-d RewriteRule  .* index.php [QSA,L]</code>

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.

Hi Erik,

No problem, glad I could help

To answer your question, No it doesn't matter which you use because the end result will be re-written to remove the file extension and add a forward slash at the end.

For consistency I would suggest having it without the .php inside your content though. If nothing else it would save you the pain of having to remove .php from your content if you moved to a content management system in the future.

If you've got any other questions let me know, and I'll be happy to help.

Ben

Just tried this on my development server and it worked fine:

RewriteBase / RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^test.local RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ (.).php\ HTTP RewriteRule (.).php$ $1 [R=301]

remove index RewriteRule (.*)index$ $1 [R=301]

remove slash if not directory RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /$ RewriteRule (.)/ $1 [R=301] # add .php to access file, but don't redirect RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$RewriteRule (.) $1.php [L]

The dev URL is test.local so you would want to change this to www.yourdomain.co.ukI had a page called about.php if I entered http://test.local/about.php or http://test.local/about it would show http://test.local/about in the address bar

Try using this instead:

<code>RewriteBase /</code> 

<code># remove .php; use THE_REQUEST to prevent infinite loops
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.com
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ (.).php\ HTTP
RewriteRule (.).php$ $1 [R=301]

remove index

RewriteRule (.*)index$ $1 [R=301]

remove slash if not directory

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /$
RewriteRule (.*)/ $1 [R=301]

add .php to access file, but don't redirect

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
RewriteRule (.*) $1.php [L]</code>