Wordpress network admin panel for new subsite doesn’t work (and no theme on new site)
I installed the latest Wordpress (late 2016). Activated network, by following this guide. Worked a bit on the main site, and then added a second site to the network /site2.
Problems started. Once I tried to access the new blog, the public front, there was no theme. Once I tried to access the back-end, site2/wp-admin, I got a 500 internal error, a.k.a. too many redirects. I spent an evening and a complete morning trying to fix the error. Almost went on to do a fresh installation. Although, I wanted to avoid that because if it worked, it would just be magic.
Some stuff I did:
Activated specific logs and increased the log level warning in Apache
Re-checked the wp-config.
Re-checked virtualhost configuration, my sites-enabled / default
Checked if the databases were created as they should for the sub-site (Wordpress adds a suffix, table_name_n, where n is the site id (or at least some kind of increment).
Changed the theme and went from static front page to blog front page. (somewhere on the internet, it was stated that the theme could be an issue, but honestly, how could it be?)
Thought I re-checked the .htaccess, to secure it contained the content available in the network configuration page at my wp-install.
Thought is the keyword. I did indeed check it and paste what should be included, but I was editing the wrong file.
How did I solve it, or rather, how did I arrive at the solution?
Besides almost going crazy and doing all of the above stuff hundreds of time to secure it was in order I decided to follow the wp guide again.
Step 1: wp-config.php - everything was in order
Step 2: .htaccess, discoverd the issue... once done, everything worked like a charm.
Learning: secure the basic. follow the process. be strict in checking the steps.