Is MU Domain Mapping still required to access www.subsite.com directly

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This is my first WP site, and it's a new path-based multisite. For example purposes, developer.com is the main site, and portal.com and customer1.com are sub-sites.

Customer1.com is visible through the URL: developer.com/customer1.com, but the url customer1.com just returns its folder file list or an error depending on what path I experiment with in Site Address though the dashboard.

I read MU Domain Mapping was created to enable this, but there are comments elsewhere that after WP 4.5, that plugin isn’t needed. But after many hours searching, I don’t seen instruction anywhere on how to configure WP and the domain in Cpanel to make it work?

Question 1: “If” MU Domain Mapping is not needed, how do I change the defaults for the URL www.customer1.com and http://customer1.com to render properly ?

Question 2: Since customer1.com will eventually be a site accessed through portal.com, along with customers 2 … X that may not want to purchase domain names and will be satisfied with a url of portal.com/customerX, should I reinstall my account so that portal.com is the main site?

Question 3: Would having a domain based Multisite make any of this work better?

Thank you, Bill
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johnpaulb-imhs1
Hello BillCarson, Thank you for your question regarding domain mapping with multisite. Yes, this can be setup without a plugin, but you have to ensure your domain's DNS is setup correctly. This is covered in this helpful guide "The Ultimate Guide to Domain Mapping with WordPress and Multisite" I found via online search. Since there are several steps, I recommend following that tutorial. You should be able to create web pages such as "portal.com/customerX" with this setup (I don't recommend using capital letters). It may be easier to use subdomains such as "customerx.portal.com" instead of folders, but either option should be possible. Thank you, John-Paul