I'm being tasked at my company to work out a plan to handle 50 new clients that we're about to bring in. Each client is directly related and under an "umbrella" company that owns them all. All 50 sites will be pretty similar, each is for a different company so the themes may vary across them all.
We're planning to give them 10 themes to pick from for all 50 sites. So some of them will be very similar, some won't be at all.
Is Wordpress the best path? I'm very familiar with Wordpress. I've worked with Expression Engine before but am not as savvy as I am with Wordpress and I understand Expression Engine also has a multi site functionality.
So my question, is Wordpress Multi Site the best path for this? What would you do in my situation?
Also, if we wanted to create a user that has access to 10 of the 50 sites, is that possible? We'll need to narrow permissions.
Also, each site will need its own domain name. Is that possible?
Thanks guys!
Yes, Multisite can handle this easily.
To run Mapped Domains, using the MU Domain Mapping plugin cited by #Calle, you need to set up the network as sub-domains (opposed to a directories set up). And the mapped domains must be set as Parked Domains pointing to the directory of the WordPress Multisite installation.
Multisite user management can be a little tricky.
If some site of the network has really special requirements for its user's management, maybe you'll have a hard time.
All users of the network are given Subscriber status in all sites (this can be masked). You can easily assign one user as Administrator of 10 sites, give Super Admin access to others, use a network role management, etc.
You can have a couple of parent themes with the corporate identity and create child themes to accomodate specific needs.
Useful info:
Multisite 101, introduction to MS by one of its wizards, don't forget the tip jar if it's useful to you ;)
This ebook strives to pull it all together, explain you what skills you need to get started, and move you to the next step: running your own Network. Think of it as a basic tutorial in running your own Multisite.
Multisite Rationale, real case study for implementation of a MS Network, if you can find a document like this for Expression Engine, then you can make your choice pretty fast.
Wordpress Multisite can either be path based (www.domain.com/site1, www.domain.com/site2), or domain-based (www.site1.domain.com, www.site2.domain.com). I believe each of these sites have separate users; I'm not sure about your question about setting up a user that only has access to a certain number of the sites, but you can set up a "master user" that has access to all the sites on the network. If you use a domain based network for MS, you can then go into each of your domains you have bought for your 50 sites and forward them using DNS/.htaccess to the individual Wordpress Multisites.
I hope that makes sense :)
Related
Web newbie. I'm setting up a family website for sharing photos, etc. I plan to purchase my own domain name and will rent space on some hosting platform. I'm thinking ahead and will eventually want to create two more websites (another family website for my father's side of the family and a personal one for me). The frugal side of me would like to limit the number of domains and hosts I have to purchase/rent.
I want the family websites to be hidden as much as possible (no SEO and requiring a login just to get to the main page), but I want my personal website to be public.
So far, what I've read says the above is difficult or cumbersome to do with wordpress multisite. If this is true, then is it safe to assume separate wordpress installs are more appropriate? Or, should I consider a new/different domain for my personal website?
Thanks,
Jim
I would:
Buy one domain example.com
Buy one hosting (shared or VPS if you have the skills)
Create multiple independent Wordpress, and use subdomain site1.example.com, site2.example.com
protect some websites with Htaccess (some free plugin may also do the trick, but with htaccess you are sure Crawler (like Google) won't access it.
There is a plugin called My private site which allows you to achieve what you are looking for:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/jonradio-private-site/
A full detailed step by step (blogpost) tutorial on how to make your site private is published here:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-make-your-wordpress-blog-completely-private/
I am developing a site in Wordpress that offers functionality and content to companies.
Each company will have hundreds of users. All users of all companies get the same content.
However, the main header changes (it needs to include the companies own logo). They also will have their own sub-domain, at least fo the login page, preferably for all pages.
The content will change regularly, so I would prefer having only one copy of that.
So the requirements are:
Same content for all users at same relative url
Different header based on group of current user
Different base url per group
forwarding of user to the correct base url if they login under a wrong one
What is the best way to implement this?
Straight WP with a sub-theme that deals with the header. Mod-rewrite to deal with the urls
WP-MultiSite (how would the same content under different base urls work here?)
Several copies of the site and somehow sync the content (how would I do the sync?)
Use a different CMS
Which of these is the most future proof way to go, assuming I might have to deal with thousands of companies each with hundreds to thousands of users.
Also, If there is an easier way because I missed something in my research like an existing plugin, that would be great too.
Thanks for your help.
I would say that such a thing depends on a lot more than these requirements. For instance, how granular would you like to have your user management? And how much are the users allowed to do on the different groups? Is unique information allowed on the different domains, or is all the information shared?
Based on the information you are providing, I think youy would be best off using the multisite version of wordpress. You then could use a broadcast plugin to share the information on all sites, and create a template site from which to create new sites (using the NS cloner plugin for instance).
There are of course some problems with this approach, for instance search engine optimisation. You will get a lot of duplicate content that will hurt the google ranking of the individual sites.
It would also be possible to do this using a single site install, but then you'll run into problems with the multiple domain structure. It can be done, but the available caching plugins will not support it (at least not that I know off), whereas a multisite environment is supported out of the box. It is also more difficult to keep users from posting on different domains, as they are using a single install. A multisite environment also has as shared user base, but they can be added or removed from the different sites at will.
Using a multisite environment would also allow you greater flexibility template-wise.
Is it possible to share blogroll links between different Wordpress Multi Network sites? I would like to link all sites to eachother (about 15) in a Network widget/menu on the right. All are pretty much in same niche.
I would not mind being able to manage some content as a Users database and Blogroll links centrally, I have been unable to find out how to do this.
It seems unique tables were generated per site, which makes me doubt if this is possible.
How can I get pretty statistics per subdomain? I don't want to create 15 sites in Analytics or Piwik, if this is no necessary.
Any tips for running Wordpress in an Networked environment are welcome.
There are a number of (unfortunately) premium plugins that will do as you ask:
Sitewide blogroll links
is purely a blogroll that can be centrally published. For something a bit more specific to the network, look into:
WP Social Blogroll
That one takes a little bit of doing to configure it, but it does work in Network mode.
For stats, you don't have a lot of good choices. I would tend to stick with Google Analytics, run a single master UA code and just use filters to shard off each of the network sites for reporting purposes. Depending on how your network is configured, there is (again, unfortunately) another premium plugin that specifically supports WordPress Network mode. If you are running it in sub-domains, that plugin should automatically track by sub-domain.
Not sure if this is the right place to ask, sorry if its not. I build a lot of Wordpress sites. My problem is, the number of them is getting big and harder to update them all when new releases come out.
I have written an app that will download the latest Wordpress release, and manually ftp the new files to all the clients, but this takes forever... need a new way.
I wanted to restructure this while I can or start a new process at least. Whats the best way to manage multiple Wordpress sites and keep them all updated? Some people have said 1 DB and modded config, others I have seen said to keep all installs separate and use plugins to automatically upgrade, but I don't know whats best to do. Ideas? Thanks :)
If these were all sites you managed on your own server, I'd recommend using a Multisite installation rather than separate instances of WordPress. This way you only have one set of themes, one set of plug-ins, and one copy of WordPress to maintain.
If these sites are on different servers (i.e. you're maintaining sites for clients remotely), I'd recommend you look in to a beta account with WP Remote. This is a service specifically built to allow you to remotely monitor and update multiple WordPress installations. It might be the best solution for you because it allows you to use the one-click update rather than manually downloading/FTP-ing the new files.
You can use this free self hosted app http://infinitewp.com
No limitation in number of sites being managed. You can update WP/plugin/themes, do backups, one click login to your WordPress admin panel.
EAMann is right, especially with the new Multi Site features in Wordpress 3.0, there is no better way to manage multiple sites under one umbrella. Being a developer myself, I know the pain of having to login to all those different accounts!
The way to set it up is create a "master domain name" that you will log into. Place this in your WP Config:
define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);
Then login to your admin panel, navigate to TOOLS>Network.
After you've set everything up, copy/paste what it tells you to your HTAccess and WP Config file.
The next step, especially if you are putting clients on this network, is they will want their own domain name, not AIBot.com/theirname right? Thats where Domain Mapping comes in:
http://ottopress.com/2010/wordpress-3-0-multisite-domain-mapping-tutorial/
Check that out and good luck!
What you need is www.managewp.com it can do all of that for you plus a ton of other excellent features.
Is it possible to control 2 different Drupal website from 1 admin panel? 2 different domain, but on same host-server.
one of my client came up with the idea and I wasn't sure if it can be done.
Appreciate advices! Thanks a lot!
If you're just trying to have two domains point to the same Drupal installation (e.g. http://example.com/ and http://example2.com point to the same Example Drupal website), this is supported out of the box as long as you don't use a multisite setup.
That is, normally, you'd just stick your settings.php file in sites/default/. If you did that, any domain that's pointed to the Drupal directory will use the same Drupal site. You don't need to do anything else.
If you've stuck your site in sites/example.com, you could create a symbolic link with the name of the other domain; i.e. you'd have sites/example.com and a symbolic link to it called sites/example2.com.
If you're trying to run two disparate sites through the same admin panel, you can't do it per se: that is, you can't manage most aspects of Drupal through its default administration system because it's not designed to do that.
However, if you're trying to simulate something like Plesk or Cpanel—that is, you just want to easily manage Drupal deployments using one control panel—there is a project under heavy development called Aegir. I've used it on a few different occasions and it works pretty great, but it's a somewhat involved setup process.
With http://drupal.org/project/domain you can simulate two websites. Is not actually two different Drupal installation.
You can take a look http://drupal.org/node/346385 for more information about the different multi-site options.
No, not that I am aware. As well as the content, all the administration aspects of the site are stored in the site's database, so the admin area and the front end of the site are joined at the hip! 1 database per site, so 1 admin area per site.
There is Aegir http://www.aegirproject.org which is a multi-site manager dashboard system. It's more for creating and managing the site than for managing content, but it might be what you're looking for.