[wp-edu] add a non wordpress folder to the multisite file structure

[Chuck Scott]

> We are running our course sites through Wordpress multisites. We would like to link to a stand-alone site (game).  Is there a specific place where I can put the game folder on the multi-site server? Or do we need to have the game folder on a different server?
>

Hi Darcy (and wp-edu list) ... i actually got hosed on this issue two
or three years back with a church client multisite site set up in that
WP tripped over the dynamic applications and caused them not to fire
...

thus the short answer = name your game folders something that will
never be a part of your WP category, tag, or page names ... otherwise,
if your game resides in a folder that shares similar WP category, tag
or page name then the htaccess rules will prevail and your game files
bomb ...

note to answer = this might be different if you install WP in a sub
directory versus root install ... my experience was from WP installed
in root as when it came out (circa 3.0) that was the only option but i
believe as of 3.5 you can now install WP in a sub directory so if that
is the case you might get a different experience ..??..

background to my experience ... my church client had five or six
subsites on the WP network - e.g., the primary site for the parish
office for all the contact us, mass schedule, bulletins, etc ...
another site for photos so other editors and youth group folks could
add all the photos they wanted ... another site for members of
congregation to converse ala facebook/tweeter kind of stuff using the
p2 theme ... etc ... yet we also had a number of dynamic realtime
ecommerce applications on the site in a cgi scripting language that
ran their prayer line and buy a candle apps ... originally the prayer
line was in the "prayers" sub folder which was how we designed the
site 10 years ago before we moved over to WP multisite ... never
occured to us there might be a trip up as the cgi scripts were not php
nor htaccess sensitive (ie., built using html/os) ... but as you might
imagine, "prayers" is a pretty popular term for said client
stakeholders so we quickly learned that our prayer line and other
dynamic apps ceased to work - or better stated, ceased to co-exist and
play nice with WP ...

the work around was to create a directory we knew would never be a
term, category, or page ... in this case we used my company's name
"avanti" as that sub directory and then built all other applications
off that sub directory and voila worked (avanti all shows at top of
folder list so it made development easier without having to constantly
scroll down a long list of folders) ... so while the dynamic url was
not pretty - e.g., domain.com/cgi-bin/script/avanti/prayers/ .. the WP
url was - e.g., domain.com/prayers/ ... and then once on that WP page
they could click into the dynamic app to request a prayer, view
prayers, as well as staff login to review pending prayers to
edit-delete-approve etc...

thus hope this helps as it certainly cost me about a week of time to
figure out, debug and then another week or two to re-architect the
site's information design and code - all of which i had to eat as
unforseen development cost that we could not pass along to the client
but i digress ... cordially, chuck scott


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Chuck Scott -> Information Architect
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Specialty -> WordPress Multisite Information Design
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Site -> http://ChuckingIt.com - Reflecting on Life,
Business, Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Technology
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What's New -> Tweeting a bit at @avantigroup
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