I find myself sometimes marveling at the structures of well written code…neat indentation and clean and clear, self commenting markup, but more than that…a certain eloquence about how some functionality is written – that really gets me excited. I really enjoy looking deep into the heart of some code and seeing what it really is about….seeing a glimpse into the writers passion and emotions….

I quite like at the bottom of the WordPress site, the “Code is Poetry” image. It resonates with me because, not only do I love poetry and am a musician, I find it quite apt to describe code. Code and Poetry can be tragic, epic, beautiful, and sometimes humorous…but ultimately it describes, well I think anyway, the writers emotion about the subject. With Poetry (or music for that matter) it might be a feeling such as love or loss, while with Code it is an emotion about the functionality that will be executed. They both tell a story.

Whether you write code because it’s your job, your love, or just because you can, I think the way you write it will ultimately tell a story – and will give insight into who you – the writer, the developer, the creator – are. Or am I just being passionate about something that could be put together by anyone who understands syntax….

So that’s my recent thoughts on code, poetry, and music, and I hope to make more beautiful lines of all of them. What do you think?

So I thought I would share my joy with a quick guide, because it was great to see it actually work!

What do you need…

Requirements:

• WordPress Mu – if you dont know how to install it – check out Sarah Gooding’s great tutorial here
• Domain Mapping Plugin
• Access to the WordPress Mu install files on your hosting via FTP or File Manager (whatever,a s long as you can edit the code!)
• A hosting provider that is willing to make apache changes – critical to success – I had the privilege of working with RSAWEB on these projects but also confirmed with Serve Hosting that they can do it as well (although I havent tried it with them yet).

Just tell me how already!

• Install WordPress Mu
• Make sure Subdomains have been chosen as the blog option during install – needs wildcard DNS for this
• Download and extract the WordPress Domain Mapping Plugin
• Upload the sunrise.php file into your wp-content folder
• Upload the domain_mapping.php file into your wp-content/mu-plugins folder
• Now…edit your wp-config.php file in the document root of your site
• Find the line that says define( 'SUNRISE', 'on' ); and uncomment it – add it if it isnt in the file
• Dont forget to save your edited wp-config.php file
• Activate the Domain Mapping Plugin on the main WordPress Mu site backend
• Go to the Domain Mapping Plugin section in the main site backend
• Enter the IP for the main site in the Server IP Address field as example below
• 
• If you dont know how to get the IP – you can ping the domain by going into the command prompt (if you’re working in windows) and type “ping mydomain.com”
• Now go to the sub blog backend that you want to domain map
• Activate the Domain Mapping Plugin
• Go to the Domain Mapping Plugin section in the sub blog backend
• Enter the domain that you want to map to the sub blog in the Add new domain field until it appears under the Active domains on this blog
• 
• Now – you need to notify your hosting provider that they need to get Apache to catch the domain and point it at the same document root of the main site domain – ie the document root of your WordPress Mu install
• Usually this involves them doing one of 2 things – editing the vhost and/or editing the A records/CNAME records – they ’should’ know what to do though
• Once the above has been done, all should be working great and you can view your sub blog at the new domain just like a regular WordPress site but on one code base!

Warning : Things can go pear shaped very quickly if you are not careful – the first time I did this I almost broke the entire install – not good if you are doing client work on a live site – don’t go editing database records; you can get it done that way but I don’t recommend it because your upgrading functionality becomes obsolete.

function nameOfFunction($query) {
if ($query->is_feed) {
$query->set('cat','-1');
}
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts','nameOfFunction');

Note : the -1 is the category id, I didnt try it but I suppose you could change the category parameters where it says cat to something like category_name and still get the same result.

You could also just change the is_feed to some of the other conditional tags that WordPress has for a different effect.

Thanks to Lucas for suggesting I share this!

It’s been a fantastic last 3 years at White Wall Web, full of great experience and fun. I’ve learned so much from great professionals like Peter Flynn and Noel Ross-Gillespie, and am very grateful for the opportunities that they gave me.

So yes, it’s exciting stuff, and I’m looking forward to the challenge ahead!