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.
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I'm researching to see if building a full website for a hotel be a good idea to do on WordPress.
I read that wordpress is okay but there are better options.
I want to design and code my own front end look to the website, but have the backend on a stable platform that can take all the reservations seamlessly.
My main concern is to be able to have a backup of all the files and easily switch to another server in case something goes wrong.
I can host the website on my server or host with the service you suggest that comes with the platform all together.
Any ideas and/or suggestions are greatly appreciated!
There are other options, no doubt, but yes, it can and is really possible to build it using WordPress as CMS.
If you want to design and code your own theme, you'll need to study the WordPress Theme Structure and, since you'll build it by yourself, you'll also need to develop plugins to create custom post types (aka CPT) to make the hotel management easier on the WP back-end.
About the theme structure, files, child themes and everything, I'd recommend you to read https://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
About the plugins development: https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/
About Custom Post Types: https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/post-types/registering-custom-post-types/
About the backup: it's super easy and you can even make a full backup using free plugins via back-end. But if the site goes down you can easily do it via FTP downloading only wp-content folder and the database. It's really simple to migrate from one WordPress to another, or from host to host.
About the hosting, you'll need to use a server if you want to build this project. There's a difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org
The .com is simpler, you are not able to build everything you want. The .org is the open source project, which you get the files, upload to your server and connect to database (MariaDB or MySQL). Most hosts offer automatic installation for WordPress and, from there, you can change whatever you want and need.
Note: many developers create CPTs INSIDE the theme's code, but this is not recommended by WP as you can see in We recommend that you put custom post types in a plugin rather than a theme. This ensures that user content remains portable even if they change their theme.
WP is not really hard, after 1 week studying you'll see yourself getting over most difficulties. Even if it takes longer, don't give up. There's a huge community to help you with WP questions.
Hope it helps and I'm sorry my bad writing, I'm not an english native speaker.
C ya
I have a website through shopify, hosting through Shopify, and want it rebuilt in WordPress.
What would be the best way to do this while keeping the original website live until the new website is done? The new website may take a while to be created since the database of products needs a lot of modification.
I was thinking about creating a new hosting account and building it there without connecting it to the domain name, and when it is ready I'll connect it. Does this make sense or is it even possible? Or should I build I'd offline and upload it when it's ready? I'm not quite sure how I would build it offline though...
Thanks in advance!
Like the others said, you can build it offline on your computer using a program like XAMPP to create an offline server, however I prefer to build the new website online on a sub domain of your current domain, and switch it over once the website is done.
For example, if your website is amazon.com you can create a sub domain dev.amazon.com and build it there. You will most likely have to use a search and replace plugin to replace all instances of "dev.amazon.com" with "amazon.com".
As for transferring all your products etc. you can export all your products from Shopify as a CSV file and then re-import it into WooCommerce using a plugin called WP All Import along with the WooCommerce add-on.
Good luck!
You can build it in a new hosting environment set up for wordpress hosting. And yes, you can reassign your domain to the new site when it is ready. I don't think building an offline wordpress site would be wise if you aren't familiar with apache servers or transferring wordpress sites to different servers, it can be a headache.
Funny enough you're asking this. I currently am working on a project that is more or less the same task. The best and most optimal way would to just develop the website locally on your machine, using a program like XAMPP or WAMP.
Here's a link on how to get started using a virtual machine that is localized on your computer: https://managewp.com/blog/how-to-create-a-local-wordpress-website-in-windows-with-xampp
After installing WordPress on your machine, you can proceed by installing Woo-Commerce. This is the best e-commerce plugin which works with WordPress and is highly recommended due to how frequently updated it is. There are tons of themes out there which can help you change the look of your shop depending on what look and feel you want your shop to be.
Since you're porting a Shopify website over to WordPress, I assume the Shopify site didn't have anything crazy over-the-top when it comes to the look & feel...That being said, I would 100% recommend the "Storefront" theme for WooCommerce, which is a great theme, both for developers and non-developers to use. Here's a link to the Storefront theme, which is free:
https://woocommerce.com/storefront/
In terms of hooking up the domain to the website, this can be done once you actually are ready to launch the website. There's no need to have a live domain working for developing.
Good luck! I hope this helps!
I want to set up a system where a developer can work on a separate server on a wordpress website.
My question is: If in the meantime changes are made to the live site (like plugin updates, new plugins, new posts, new comments, etc), how is one able to import a new feature (e.g. a new page) from the development server on the live site while making sure that previous changes on the live site don't get deleted?
I am looking to understand how this all works. In a sense, I would like to have some kind of version control system.
Thanks in advance :)
You can version control your own code using git. Basically we would init a new git repo and commit changes onto this repository. This can lie separately outside of the core files. i.e you only need to include the wp-content directory and ignore all the other core wordpress files.
Here is a good article on how to do a really good versioning system for a website.
http://toroid.org/git-website-howto
The posts and pages (basically content) in a wordpress site however lies in the database.Any changes made there will be permanent.
The only option is to keep taking regular backups of the content. You can do this by using an automated backup tool.
If you really want to version control your database, here is an article that helps:
https://blog.codinghorror.com/get-your-database-under-version-control/
This one is a tricky one. You cant host a single website on two servers. Just imagine a website having 2 hosted urls..!! No way.. You can never do that.
You better create a new user and give access to him. Look carefully in the settings and be a admin. You will have a chance to approve or reject what the second user changes.
Hope this helps.
I am in the process of creating a staging site for my woocommerce shop.
Wanting to protect access to it, I put it behind an HTTP Authorisation.
However, this means that PayPal IPN will not work.
This site is only for my testing usage. I do not want people creating accounts on it.
However, as it is supposed to be using exactly the same code base as production I cannot envisage disabling the signup code.
This is my dilemma.
What can be done to protect this site from unwanted access, still leaving it as a correct copy of production code ?
What I would do is to create a new site under another domain name or subdomain without making the DNS pointers. You would then need to set the pointer in you local hosts file. The site would then work like normal for you but without the entry in the host file you would not be able to access the website(at least not in a normal way without manipulating the requests). As you probably guessed, this is not super safe if you really don't want anyone else to access the staging site, but usually that is not a big deal. No one will end up there by misstake.
Secondly I would create a script sync the production environment to the staging environment. This can be done quite easily using WP-CLI (wp db export db-dump.sql + wp db import db-dump.sql + wp search-replace domain.com stage.domain.com).
I have the impression that there is no ideal solution to this question.
This is my solution - others may have better or alternative answers though.
I created a special sub-domain under a different domain.
I then installed all necessary code and setup the site as if it were a production site. Then I created my test accounts and disactivated all account sign-up links.
I have been able to setup paypal sandbox as well.
This gives me a staging site using the same code base as production where in I can test all changes and updates before applying them to production, without having the risk of using existing client data.
This meets my needs. I hope it may be useful for others.
Hey folks, I got a project from a firm program out a Wordpress design. 80% into it I learn that the client already have an existing one, a robust one, with subsrciptions, blogs, forums, newsletter mailers and so on. Turns out there is a discrepancy bettweent design and old wp structure which I will work on resolving.
I have been developing in on my own server for the time being.
At this point I am not clear on what the strategy should be.
1.) Export out the current wp site out to a different server, duplicate it and then reskin/rework the frame work.
2.) The firms hope was that I would be able to go in and add a new theme, but am not convinced that doing this live will be a good idea since I am using a different theme so all the hooks will be different then the current one.
3.) There is already a large amount of users etc that have signed up to the existing newletter, forum etc. Not sure how to carry this forward?
Any insights are greatly appreciated.
Definitely make a copy of the existing environment. Check it into a version control system (if it's not already the case) and work on that.
Try to put all your work into a new theme: That will make installing the changes on the production server super-easy.
Be careful about any notifications and pings that your development copy may send to the outside world. Be especially careful about the newsletter.