Ron and Andrea Rennick wrote an easy to use plugin that allows nested networks.
This plugin provides the interface to set up another network of sites within the install you already have. You may choose to run this additional network off a different domain entirely or a subdomain – it’s very flexible.
The plugin was installed the other day on the Tux Reports Network and sub-networks were created.
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[/media-credit]The greatest challenge was the domain name propagation for each new network. TigerTech created aliases for the domains and the domain mapping utility by Donncha points the domain name to the proper site ID.
Initially, child-network names were created using subdomain.domain configurations. After the domain name propagated to TigerTech then the name was properly mapped and the database was edited so that the configuration used the domain name rather than the subdomain.domain name. This is not the fastest method but allowed continued access to the wp-admin/network directory for each new network until after the domain propagation.
To further test, an existing site within the network was converted to a sub-network. This involved database edits of wp_site and wp_blogs.
Cool! Thanks for the description of your steps. I’ll watch for more of the same.