Can't add child sites outside webhost

Support
1

New user here trying to setup for the first time. I was able to install the dashboard on a new site hosted with my web host (SiteGround). I was also able to install all child sites hosted on SiteGround. I am not able to connect any child sites I have hosted on my own campus network though. I’ve tried adding several different sites both production and test. None of them seem to work and I’m not sure why. When I try to test connection I get back “Could not resolve host”, but it should be publicly resolvable. I’ve tested that with MXToolbox and I have no trouble accessing these sites from home without being on a VPN or anything. I’ve poked around here for the last hour or so and I’ve come up short so far. Thoughts?

2

Can you check that all these features show as passed on the Campus Child Sites?

  1. Log in to your Child Site
  2. Go to the WP > Settings > MainWP Child > Server Information page
  3. Locate the following checks and make sure that all of them display the Pass response:
  • MainWP Upload Directory
  • SSL Extension Enabled
  • SSL Warnings
  • cURL Version
  • cURL OpenSSL Version
3

Those all pass. I’m am however getting a cURL Timeout warning. Mine is set to 60 and it wants 300. Considering how fast it’s failing I kind of doubt that’s an issue unless it’s hardcoded to ensure those all pass.

4

Hi Brian,

thanks for getting back to us.

Can you tell us is there some Firewall or any other security rule on your campus network host? Are you able to review logs to see if there are some blocked requests from your MainWP Dashboard?

5

I just turned on debug mode in my wp-config.php, but I’m not seeing any error log, but MainWP continues to say “MainWP is unable to find your error logs, please contact your host for server error logs.” I’m looking on the host for a log, but I’m not seeing one. Where would it be? I see no information about this on the MainWP website.

I do see a DNS error in the server php_error.log referring to the SiteGround plugin they now put on all the sites. I’ll contact their support about that and see if I get anywhere.

1 Like
6

Hi Brian,

thanks for getting back to me.

I was referring to the Firewall log on the server, I believe that you will need to check that with your host support. I don’t think that the Debug log would provide us any useful information here, but you can check here how to enable it.

Please let us know how it goes with the DNS recheck.

7

I don’t have it working yet, but I think I identified the issue. It appears to be a DNS resolution issue from within the campus network. It works from outside, but internal DNS is not resolving correctly which is causing the child sites not be be able to connect back out. Hoping to get it fix tomorrow.

3 Likes
8

Hi Brian, thanks for letting us know.

9

Seems that was not it. That issue has been addressed and I still can’t add any campus hosted sites. I talked with SiteGround support this morning and they couldn’t see any issues. They recommended I contact the developer and let them know if there is anything specific you’d like them to do or check. DNS seems fine.

10

Firewall has also been looked at by the way. I tried adding the site by IP address instead of host name and then it returns this error which makes me think it can contact the server and then WordPress is doing a 302 redirect to the actual named address:

Connection failed!

URL: macforms.morrisville.edu - HTTP-code: 302 (Found) - Error message: Could not resolve host: macforms.morrisville.edu

11

Hi Brian,

Would you mind opening a private Help Desk ticket so we can collect some additional information & investigate further?

12

I opened a help desk ticket. Thanks.

1 Like
13

Just figured out the issue. I’ll provide examples to illustrate. In my case the parent site is hosted on SiteGround at site parent.example.com. I also have SiteGround hosting one other site in the same domain. Per SiteGround support, in order for SiteGround to host sites for example.com it must use its own A records for that domain even if it’s not normally the authoritative DNS server for example.com. From it’s perspective it is and must be the authoritative DNS for example.com when hosting any sites for that domain. Once I manually created an A record for child1.example.com (which is hosted elsewhere) then I was able to add the child site to be managed within the MainWP parent site that is hosted on SiteGround.

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14

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