Title: Nested sites without multiple installations
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# Nested sites without multiple installations

 *  [Aaron Wagner](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ajwagner777/)
 * (@ajwagner777)
 * [15 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nested-sites-without-multiple-installations/)
 * I have seen this question asked in other places on this forum but without any
   workable solution. Here is the scenario. We are considering moving our university
   website into wordpress, but the one thing that is holding me back right now is
   the ability to have nested sites, at a level higher than the first “folder” level.
 * Consider this URL: [http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/research/](http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/research/)
   
   This needs to be a site managed by our Office of Research. No problem, right?
   Well add to that, that I need this URL: [http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/research/centers/cep/](http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/research/centers/cep/)
   to be another site, managed by a totally different group. I can lose the “centers”
   portion of the URL, but that seems incidental to this requirement.
 * Categories and adding things to the permalink structure is not really an option
   because these need to be distinct sites, managed by different, but sometimes 
   overlapping groups.
 * One solution that I have seen is doing nested installs. This is a bad idea for
   us because I am a 1-person web department and don’t have the resources to manage
   10+ installs of wordpress.
 * Given that worpress already has the ability to emulate folder structures, this
   should not be a huge undertaking. I am willing to entertain ideas of using the
   web.config (I am on IIS) and the URL rewrite module to accomplish this, but I
   am not 100% sure how to move forward.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

 *  [Tim Moore](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tmoorewp/)
 * (@tmoorewp)
 * [15 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nested-sites-without-multiple-installations/#post-2023475)
 * At my university, our solution has been to redirect URLs in Apache (or IIS in
   your case). In your example, we’d create a site at /research/ and another one
   at /research-cep/, then redirect the /research/centers/cep/ URL to /research-
   cep/ from within IIS/Apache (that way it is handled before WordPress sees the
   request).
 * We’re in the same boat with staffing. This has been the easiest solution for 
   us.
 *  [Andrea Rennick](https://wordpress.org/support/users/andrea_r/)
 * (@andrea_r)
 * [15 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nested-sites-without-multiple-installations/#post-2023495)
 * Tim, if you could do a write-up or tutorial on how to get those nested folders,
   I’m not the only one who woudl appreciate it. 😉
 *  [Tim Moore](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tmoorewp/)
 * (@tmoorewp)
 * [15 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nested-sites-without-multiple-installations/#post-2023497)
 * Sure thing 🙂
 *  [Andrea Rennick](https://wordpress.org/support/users/andrea_r/)
 * (@andrea_r)
 * [15 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nested-sites-without-multiple-installations/#post-2023498)
 * *cough* blog guest post *cough*
 *  Thread Starter [Aaron Wagner](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ajwagner777/)
 * (@ajwagner777)
 * [15 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nested-sites-without-multiple-installations/#post-2023501)
 * I think we might be headed in the right direction. I am not a huge fan of that
   proposal, but what if we did a URL rewrite of /research-cep/ to /research/cep/?
   I realize that the former is still a rewrite, but can you do a rewrite of a rewrite?
 *  [Tim Moore](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tmoorewp/)
 * (@tmoorewp)
 * [15 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nested-sites-without-multiple-installations/#post-2023502)
 * You could probably set something up with Apache’s ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse
   in mod_proxy, though it’s going to add some overhead to your web server.
 * I know my proposal won’t give you /research/cep/ in the finished URL’s, but it
   at least gives you the capability of having nested URLs for advertising and linking.
 *  [tnoskilz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tnoskilz/)
 * (@tnoskilz)
 * [14 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nested-sites-without-multiple-installations/#post-2023717)
 * Any luck with this? I’d love to see the details if you worked out a method using
   rewrites to get the nested subfolders for SEO.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

The topic ‘Nested sites without multiple installations’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [iis](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/iis/)
 * [multisite](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/multisite/)

 * In: [Networking WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/multisite/)
 * 7 replies
 * 4 participants
 * Last reply from: [tnoskilz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tnoskilz/)
 * Last activity: [14 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nested-sites-without-multiple-installations/#post-2023717)
 * Status: not resolved

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