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Adding subdomain to old website
I want to add a separate website as a subdomain to my existing domain, preferably without breaking anything. I am pretty sure I can just make a new folder, drop a new copy of Txp into it, create a new sql database, and do a redirect. Alternatively, I could do some Txp magic to make the existing installation multi-site. I am pretty sure that the first choice is safer, right? Or will I regret this and wish I did Txp multi-site? I don’t want to break what already exists.
Second: New website look-and-feel. My old website is using a 20-year-old and very hacked Txp default template that looks dated. Does that mean I need to go look at various “themes” for the new site? I’ve ignored themes in the past, so I don’t really know what they do or how they work.
The name of the game here is minimal pain for a non-professional. The new site is for a project that has no money, so it’s just little ol’ me contributing my time. I will be the only person editing the site.
(FYI: It’s a university cubesat project)
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Re: Adding subdomain to old website
Both methods will work. Either:
- Separate installations: create a new folder on your server and put a fresh textpattern installation in that folder. Set up a subdomain + certificate in your host’s control panel and point it to that folder. Create a new database and run the setup and you’re good to go.
- Multisite: that works too but you’d need to move parts of your existing site to the /sites folder, then set up a new folder under /sites for the other site. Both sites then run from the same core textpattern installation. If you’re using a more modern version for the new site, you may need to make sure your existing site works with the upgraded core files. There are ways to set up multisite installations that run from different base versions of Textpattern but if you just have two sites, there’s no benefit to that.
Regarding themes: there are precious few ready-made themes out there. But one way of the other, any not-aged version of Textpattern now stores the site’s templates in the themes panel.
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Re: Adding subdomain to old website
Thank you, Jacob. I am running 4.8.8 now, so some of those concerns don’t apply. Except how many installations I will have to update to 4.9.
Okay, wait…I can install 4.9-beta for the new site and use the 4.9-beta default site, which should be the most modern available, right?
Last edited by skewray (Today 02:26:22)
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Re: Adding subdomain to old website
In my opinion, 4.9 is ready for use, and there are only a couple of quite specific fixes (see flightplan) in the pipeline for the release candidate. The current standard theme is in the /setup/ folder (here) should you want to check in advance.
You could install the new beta for the new site as a separate installation, then update your existing site at a later date. You just have two sets of textpattern installations, which, I guess, many people have.
I’ve mostly used multisite with particular client installations where they have a family of related sites on one host. I don’t use it everywhere. If you did decide to go the multisite route, you might want to see the little recording I did when last checking multisite installations with 4.9. For your sites, you’d use your own/your host’s control panel to create subdomains and point them to the relevant site’s /public and /admin folders (e.g. with cPanel). You also need to use SFTP/SSH to transfer the files to your server to preserve symlinks, though the install script will try and refresh them if they are missing). There’s not an automatic migration from regular to multisite routine, so you’d need to move parts of your existing site to the relevant /public, /private and /admin folders and augment your config.php with multisite details. You wil also need to adjust some of your site’s prefs to match the new paths as well.
After that, though, you will only need to update the base /textpattern/ folder when updating Textpattern and both sites will be updated…
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