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sinious
sinious
Legend
December 16, 2015
Question

WordPress MultiSite (MU)

  • December 16, 2015
  • 1 reply
  • 750 views

Hey all,

Wondering if anyone lurking around here uses WordPress MultiSite.

I'm mostly interested in knowing:

- If people even know WordPress has a MultiSite feature

- Do you work on development servers and migrate these sites to production

- Do you work on WPMS plugins

- Do you have any plugins that assist WPMS in a "need to have" fashion

Most of my sites use single install mode but I'm getting more clients who want a site developed that can be replicated easily. An random example would be a site for Events. You may have several different event sites for different reasons but want to manage them all in the same place and utilize a single WP install in MU mode. Maybe you sell cars and have multiple lots and want all the same data across all of them but the sites to be separate yet unified in the back end. Etc..

If you haven't explored WordPress MultiSite, here's some information on it:

Create A Network « WordPress Codex

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Rob Hecker2
Rob Hecker2
Legend
December 16, 2015

Many years ago I experimented with WordPress multisites. Eventually I decided to write my own blog module and required my clients to give up their WP blogs and migrate to the one I built.

As I recall, out-of-the-box this feature does not work the way you want. Each blog shares the underlying WP code, but the data for each is separate. In fact this feature is based on the way WordPress.com hosts multiple customers. But I doubt it would be difficult to modify it to work the way you want.

That is how my own hosted CMS works. Each client website is based on a client id that is applied to every table where client data needs to be separated. Customers, on the other hand, don't need to create a new account when they purchase from different clients.

A random example would be a site for Events

That is what my CMS is. It includes classes, lectures and other types of events. It would be interesting to see a WordPress site that attempts to do the same thing. The table that defines events in my system has 46 columns and has relations to many other tables. So a mature event system goes beyond date, time, title, description and price. Consider the following: You don't want to keep selling seats to an event once the last seat has been sold, so if an event is defined as having a capacity of 200, you want the page on the website describing the event to automatically stop selling seats when capacity has been met.

WordPress gets modified for a lot of uses, but there is a point where you have to ask if it isn't like wanting to end up with a boat and starting with a Volkswagen Jetta.

sinious
siniousAuthor
Legend
December 16, 2015

Hi Rob,

Boy you have done just about everything

this feature does not work the way you want. Each blog shares the underlying WP code, but the data for each is separate

Yes this is exactly how it works, and also how they handle WordPress.com, but why is that not the way you want it? By doing this you can use a single framework and manage multiple sites. The data is kept in numbered tables (e.g. instead of wp_posts it's wp_1_posts, wp_2_posts, etc). Network admins can easily install themes and plugins for all sites on the network.

You do have your clients bound together which is nice that you normalized that aspect of the db but it wouldn't be too difficult to do something like this with a WP network plugin that just synchronizes user tables. Albeit it isn't normalized because of the redundant data, but separate user accounts can have their advantages site to site (ACL of any type).

I didn't mean to suggest that I'm using WP to manage the vast majority of data on this site though. I just wondered if people used WPMU much and had opinions or pitfalls to mention for their usage. For my particular needs, all I need WPMU to do is display a static site. The sites data entirely comes from a remote API. WP is just used for the easy management of navigation and themes. On a page where I need to list data I made a custom plugin that filters shortcodes so people can easily request the data, like [get_event_list="event_id"] and the data is displayed. The multisite is on the same network as the API which also has mproxy that forms a public interface to avoid CORS issues and performs caching.

46 columns, wow! That must be one robust system!

Thanks for your thoughts

Rob Hecker2
Rob Hecker2
Legend
December 16, 2015

but why is that not the way you want it? By doing this you can use a single framework and manage multiple sites.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. All my client websites share both a code framework and database. Each client has a directory, using their client id as the directory name. This is mainly for storing their unique image collections and also give the domain names something to point to. Design specifics and CSS are also stored in the database by client id. Clients use a design editor to define their color scheme, fonts, etc.

I didn't mean to suggest that I'm using WP to manage the vast majority of data on this site though

Many of my competitors are systems made up of two or more systems trying to work together. This becomes a selling point for me because my product is a single system that does everything with a level of integration that can't be achieved by trying to combine systems.

Well, I have to use authorize.net for payment processing. That's the one outside component, and it is therefore the most annoying because it's the one piece of the puzzle I don't completely control.

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