Dan & Jennifer

(Andrea clues in…. oh THAT dan & jennifer… 😀 )

LOL 🙂

If this is a fresh install (with your stuff imported), might wanna ask the webhost what’s up.

Our web host is amazing at keeping our server solid and running, but we maintain all the wordpress stuff ourselves.

on the sites you had working, are these physically on the exact same server as this one? with the same specs for php, mysql, os?

yep, all our sites are on the same VPS which has plenty of resources to spare, just different wordpress installs.

you DID disable all the plugins including any in the mu-plugins folder?

hmm, don’t have an mu-plugins folder on any of our wordpress 301 multiste installs…. so no plugins in there then.

I think I recall you saying up above you made a fresh install and imported your db in. I’d want to test a fresh install *without* your old db content to see if new blogs are created. This narrows down if it’s the server itself or something in the db.

Just to circle back, here’s what’s WORKED GREAT so far:

• just for practice, did a brand new fresh install of WP 301 and converted it to multisite. flawless. then did an import of 4 of our wordpress sites into it just to test: 1 as main blog and 3 as additional sites. again flawless.
• upgraded a less-mission-critical website (www.TodayIsThatDay) from WP291 to WP301. flawless. then enabled multisite on it.

here’s where it got rocky (read: muy mal):

1.) upgraded our main site http://www.AskDanAndJennifer.com from WP291 to WP301. that worked flawlessly.
2.) a week later (after the practice with the other sites) enabled multisite on http://www.AskDanAndJennifer.com – here it got rocky…

• enabling multisite went fine far as i could see, like the others.
• BUT any sub-site i create didn’t work, the links from “Super Admin -> Sites” to “Visit” and “Backend” are empty, just goes back to main wp admin. figured i did something wrong so deleted sub-site, and re-added it and another test one. same thing. disabled multisite, re-enabled it. tried a few other things, no luck.
• reverted AD&J back to “NOT multisite”, did a mysql export of all the data, installed a brand new fresh WP301 on another domain (dan-and-jennifer.com) and got it running, then imported just the data tables (posts, comments, users) from the production database. import worked great, site works fine (when plugins are enabled anyway, lol).
• now enabled multisite on the new “copy” site at http://www.dan-and-jennifer.com … had same problems as on http://www.askdanandjennifer.com – but then it’s the same database, even if the “wordpress install” is totally fresh shiny and clean.
• noticed that creating a new sub-site does NOT create a directory with the ID of the new sub-site in blogs.dir – and even though all our installs are directory based, they all create a directory named with the ID of the sub-site in blogs.dir. except askdanandjennifer.com and the test site dan-and-jennifer.com
• and after further debugging and learning and help here, discovered that creating a new sub-site is NOT creating the wp_SITEID_posts/options/etc. tables in the multisite database even though the database account has full permissions fine… what what could be causing this?? a setting somewhere in some obscure option in the database?

So that’s where we are… our server (VPS) is totally capable of running a multisite well, and it’s doing so with http://www.TodayIsThatDay.com and another test site… just not with our most important website and the copy of that we’re using for testing – argh! 🙂

Thanks!!
Dan

P.S. @ipstenu and @andrea_r, I really appreciate your help!!

LOL been banging my head on this same wall for nearly a week and after trying “everything” i could think of finally reached out for help. 🙂

Dan

*** Guys, found something new…

For all the new sub-sites on dan-and-jennifer.com…
In Super Admin -> Sites -> “Edit” (sub-site) – the “Site info” section is populated fine, but the REALLY LONG “Site Options” section is totally empty for all the broken sub-sites.

again comparing with our working TodayIsThatDay… that one shows a fully populated “Site Options” under each of the sub-sites…

but in the problematic install, that section is empty for the sub-sites…

so any idea what that part is not getting populated when the sub-sites are being created?

Thanks!
Dan

@ipstenu

How odd… I get a 404 on http://www.dan-and-jennifer.com/zztest/ and the db error on http://www.dan-and-jennifer.com/yytest

LOL sorry, in the test with Andrea above I disabled all plugins, deleted the sub-site zztest and created a new one yytest.

OK now I just re-created zztest so both test cases exist… it’s no longer 404, back to db error for both sub-sites:
http://www.dan-and-jennifer.com/yytest
http://www.dan-and-jennifer.com/zztest/

Is there anything in your server logs?

nope, only complaints about the disabled plugins since they’re ALL off so only half the homepage works… but the main site does function fine.

Also, you didn’t create folders on the server for yytest, right?

hmm, no… since the folders are all virtual i’m not creating any folders at all. although i do expect to see a new folder auto created in blogs.dir for each new “sub-site” as is happening on the other directory-based multisite installs we have running… but for this one it’s not…

is that what you were asking – i.e. making sure I’m not creating a real folder that’s somehow conflicting with the URL of the sub-site?

that’s why i went with these odd sub-site names just to be sure – yytest and zztest…

Thanks!
Dan

For the db error, and the link in the backend, it’s most likely a plugin interfering. You’ll have to turn them off, create a new site, then see if it works.

The db error on a new site means it didn’t get created in the db itself.

@andrea hmm, i wondered about that. but all the plugins were off when I created the test sub-site. just to test again i just disabled all of them, deleted this sub-site and created a new sub-site. with all plugins off.

Result: Same situation exactly… created the sub-site fine, but “backend” just goes to the main admin and “visit” does too. if i manually enter the URL that “should” belong to the sub-site I see the same error on that page: “Database error: Error establishing a database connection”. here it is: http://www.dan-and-jennifer.com/yytest

Any idea what else – other than plugins – could keep the sub-sites from actually being created? 🙂

@ipstenu this site I’m debugging now (dan-and-jennifer.com) IS a fresh WP 301 install – and a PHPMyAdmin table-based import of the actual content of our production site (AskDanAndJennifer.com). I was having these same problems on our production site and the debugging was causing us downtime so did the fresh install and imported the actual posts/comments/categories/users into this one. and it’s doing the exact same thing the production site was…

Thoughts?

Thanks!
Dan