Do you ever find yourself staring at a long list of installed plugins, wondering which ones are safe to delete? WordPress multisite networks can bulk up on plugins fairly quickly. Every now and then a good old-fashioned spring cleaning is in order.
Checking through each site on your network to see what plugins are in use is simply not an option. The task is much too tedious for a busy site admin like yourself. That’s where Plugin Activation Status saves the day. It essentially performs a plugin audit so that you can get rid of any extra baggage.
Find and dump all your unused plugins
When you first activate the plugin, you’ll see this screen with an empty list, located at Network Admin >> Plugins >> Active Plugins.
The list is empty until you generate the report.
Click continue to generate the lists. Don’t do this during peak traffic time if you have a massive network as it might cause slow downs.
Plugin Activation Status will produce two lists:
A list of plugins that are not currently active on any sites or networks
A list of plugins that are active somewhere within the installation, accompanied by details of where and how those plugins are activated
Plugin Activation Status locates all unused plugins
The most useful feature of this plugin is that it quickly lets you know how many plugins you can safely dump. You can also examine the plugins that are used on only a few sites to see if there are any among those that you could also get rid of, much like cleaning out your closet. New lists can be generated on demand as often as you want to clean out your network plugins.
Please note that this plugin is only for multisite networks, as it does not make sense for single site installs.
A good WordPress admin must clean up after himself.
Installing plugins just to try them out and not deleting them is a nasty habit. Sure, you’re in a hurry, but later on you’ll forget why you added those plugins and wonder if you’re really using them. Removing unused plugins is an important part of multisite maintenance. You’ll be able to see issues more clearly when troubleshooting if you have fewer plugins active, minimize security risks and keep your site leaner. Install Plugin Activation Status and it will tell you exactly which plugins you can dump for spring cleaning.
It is no secret that WordPress is everywhere, and that includes a growing presence in the land of academia.
Colleges and universities are leveraging the power and flexibility of WordPress for everything from the main university website, to course blogs, student portfolios, faculty sites, and more.
The very same team behind this blog and WPMU DEV also run Edublogs – the most popular managed hosting WordPress solution for schools and universities around the world.
In fact, WPMU DEV was born because we were building plugins and tools for Edublogs and people kept asking us for them!
If you are in higher ed, here’s a list of resources and links you definitely don’t want to miss…
Community Resources
First up, this large mailing list is made up of a good number of faculty and school administrators that use WordPress.
You’ll also want to be sure to check out the WordPress.org Education Showcase – which includes tons of examples of schools and universities using WordPress.
The Journal of Higher Education Web Professionals has published several posts on WordPress. This year’s HigherEdWeb Conference also includes at least a couple of sessions that feature topics on WordPress themes and management.
Example Networks
Take a look at these sites – all hosted by Edublogs – for just a taste of the many ways that WordPress is being used:
If you are running WordPress, then you’ll want the Edublogs team to be hosting it for you.
Dozens of schools with existing WordPress Multisites have migrated to Edublogs – and they always choose us (and stay with us) because they find that we save them money, time, and headaches.
We handle all hosting, upgrades, maintenance, SSO authentication (Shibboleth, CAS, SAML, LDAP, etc.), and provide support. All on our enterprise network that scales, is lightening fast, and secure.
Plus, sites come pre-loaded with 100+ themes and dozens of plugins from the experts here at WPMU DEV.
You can brand it at your own domain, use custom themes, and so much more.
Trying Edublogs Campus for Free!
We’ll even set you up with a fully working and live network to try us out for free. We’ll help you out with pilots and proof of concept studies before you commit.
There are hundreds of ways to backup WordPress sites but very few of them are compatible with multisite networks.
When you operate a multisite network, you’re responsible not only for the work you have put into creating the main site but also for the hard work that everyone else has put into their websites on your network. It would be tragic to lose all of that data due to a hosting failure, DDoS attack or some other misfortune that might befall your network.
Here are a few backup solutions that advertise themselves as multisite compatible. Most of the major commercial plugins dedicated to backing up WordPress have only just recently added multisite support. If you’re wondering how they compare on cost and features then read on.
BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is a product from iThemes that allows you to schedule WordPress backups and have them sent off-site to Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, an FTP server, or your email. The plugin also makes it easy to download the backups right to your desktop. Additional features include the ability to restore backups and migrate your installation of WordPress.
Pricing options vary from $80 – $197, depending on the number of licenses and the package you select.
The iThemes codex does caution that although they offer support for multisite backups, the multisite features are still somewhat experimental:
As a Network can contain many subsites, each subsite increases the amount of time needed to perform a backup, especially if the sites are large. This can demand more server resources or more PHP runtime. Most shared hosting does not permit increasing these resources so BackupBuddy may not be able to finish backups under these conditions. If you have access to modify these settings, Maximum PHP runtime is a key setting to increase as needed.
This is quite a common problem when attempting to backup very large networks and is something that will more than likely cause you to have to tinker with your server settings.
VaultPress
VaultPress is another high quality, trusted backup solution. It offers the unique feature of being able to backup your content in realtime, which means any time you publish a post, get a new comment or make any changes, your site is automatically backed up. Additional features include daily security scans, single-click repairs for common security threats and the ability to quickly restore a backup. Pricing ranges from $5 – $40/month depending on the type of backups you wish to perform and the number of additional features you require.
VaultPress does advertise multisite support. However, its support for multisite would mean that each blog owner would have to backup their own site with their own Vaultpress account. The VaultPress help section details the limitations of the support offered for multisite:
A multisite network administrator must install the plugin and activate VaultPress across the network. Each site will need a separate VaultPress subscription and registration key.
…Once activated on the network, any site administrator can purchase and register their site with VaultPress.
This seems to be very inconvenient, especially if your multisite network is one where users are no so much immersed in the WordPress dashboard. If you simply want to provide a backup of all of your sites without putting the burden on each blog owner, then VaultPress is not for you.
Snapshot
Snapshot is a plugin offered by WPMU DEV for making painless backups that are easy to access. It lets you schedule automatic backups of WordPress and integrates with Amazon S3, Dropbox or SFTP for storing backups. Snapshot offers a unique feature which allows you to create ‘Time Machine’ snapshots of your entire database or select individual tables for a custom backup that includes or excludes as much data as you like. The plugin also includes an annotated log of all snapshots. Customizable restore points enable you to make notes about each snapshop so that you can easily restore the site to any point in time.
Snapshot is 100% compatible with WordPress multisite. Database segment size can be adjusted in the plugin’s settings to keep the requests from timing out when backing up a very large database. The plugin also gives you the ability to easily increase your PHP memory limit beyond the default settings in your php.ini file so that there’s enough memory to process your backups.
The advantages of using this plugin are that you do not have to sign up for an expensive monthly service for your backups and no ongoing subscription is required. Pricing starts at just $9 for the plugin, which you can purchase and use for as long as you like on as many sites as you want without any licensing restrictions.
BackWPup
BackWPup is a free plugin available in the WordPress plugin repository. It is widely used by more than 60.000 users and gets excellent reviews. It allows you to backup WordPress to an external Backup Service, like Dropbox, S3, FTP and many more.
BackWPup lists multisite compatibility among its features. The plugin can only be used as super admin from the network admin administration. A number of additional features are included in the Pro version starting at $75, including a wizard for system tests, scheduled backups, imports and premium support.
Backup Scheduler
Backup Scheduler is a very highly rated free plugin from the WordPress.org repository. You can store backups on the website, send them via email or FTP. The options are a bit more simple than the other plugins and it doesn’t offer support for sending backups to popular file storage services.
Backup Scheduler also claims to have multisite compatibility for backing up single sites or the entire network:
Each blog administrator may save their own data. The super-admin may save either its data or the whole website.
Regardless of your budget, you need to find a way to make backups of your multisite network. Any of the free or commercial plugins listed above will get you on the right track. Have you had success backing up multisite with any other plugins than the ones listed above? Let us know your favorites in the comments.
Millions of sites depend on the Akismet service for blocking the never-ending flood of comment spam targeted at WordPress. Today we have a handy tip for WordPress multisite super admins that should save you quite a bit of time in the future.
Did you know that you can actually hard code your WordPress.com API key into your config file so that it works for your entire multisite network?
There is a little note at the top of the akismet.php file that says:
/** If you hardcode a WP.com API key here, all key config screens will be hidden */
Hiding all of the key config screens is a beautiful thing! It makes life easier for all of the admins on your network.
Here’s how to do it:
Open up your wp-config.php file. Find the line that says “That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging.” Add this constant below and replace ‘your-key’ with your WordPress.com API key:
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/** Define WordPress.com API Key */define('WPCOM_API_KEY','your-key');
Save it and re-upload. That’s it! So easy, right?
This keeps you from requiring each blog owner to have his own license key or having to add your key over and over again.
Please note that you still need to make sure to “Network Activate” the plugin so that it is applied to all blogs across your network.
This is one tip that you’ll want to apply to all of your multisite installations that depend on Akismet for protection from comment spam.
If you’re new to Multisite you may feel as though you’ve been tricked. You were told that it makes managing multiple WordPress sites so much more convenient, so you’ve jumped in with both feet. But now you’re finding new limitations and complexities.
Don’t panic. Here’s what you need to do to get to the other side where you can say “I got this” and finally have multisite working for you.
1. Give yourself a crash course in WordPress Multisite
With a little bit of studying and experimenting, you’ll be a master at multisite in no time.
When you first start your new life as a super admin you’ll find that there are many new things to learn about how multisite changes your dashboard, file structure and theme/plugin settings.
For example, when a plugin is network activated, it will disappear from the dashboard list of plugins on all of your networked sites. As a newbie this might cause you to think that it’s not active anywhere. However, the plugin is indeed active on all all sites across the network. It’s not easy to see when you’re surfing one of the sub-sites but is evident if you visit the network admin.
You need a crash course in WordPress Multisite. Lucky for you, there are many excellent, organized resources available to get you up to speed:
How to Create a Network: This reference will walk you through the basics of setting up a multisite network or help you to make sure that yours is set up correctly.
WordPress Multisite Network Administration:
This is a WordPress codex resource that provides a basic introduction to user access, permalinks, file upload path, and how plugins and themes work, .htaccess examples and more.
WordPress Multisite Manual:
In this comprehensive manual, beginners at WordPress multisite will learn about the super admin role and how it relates to other user roles, how to optimizing your WordPress network options, how to create WordPress sites using your sign up page, network administration and more.
Unfortunately, you can’t just download this into your brain. You’ll have to study a bit but you’ll be able to get all the basics in under an hour.
2. Get spam under control
Sploggers will constantly try to take over your network. It’s your job to get them under control.
It’s imperative to have spam control in place before you launch your multisite network. Otherwise, spam will rule your life, overtake your inbox and cause your site to slow to a snail’s pace. Multisite spam is particularly vicious.
Anti-Splog is hands down the best solution out there for combating multisite spam with one plugin. Download Anti-Splog for free from wordpress.org to test out its signup protection features.
A WPMU DEV membership is required in order to get an API key for access to the powerful splog-checking service. This service will save you years of your life when it comes to spam management and it’s a must-have for any multisite super admin’s toolbox.
3. Make network administration more convenient
WordPress maintenance and development can be a lot of work.
You’re going to be spending a lot of time in the WordPress dashboard while administrating your multisite network. If you start to feel like everything is three to four clicks away, you need to make the dashboard more convenient for yourself. Here are a few little gems that can help:
This plugin adds an “Add New” sub menu item to the plugins menu on all sites inside of a network for super admin users. That means that regular user won’t see it but adding plugins will be quicker for your when you’re working around the network.
Get your menus where you want them. This plugin makes important menu items more accessible for super admins. It adds the network ‘Plugins’ and ‘Install Plugin’ links to ‘My Sites’ > ‘Network Admin’ in the site admin bar.
This plugin makes it possible for you to share media across blogs in a WordPress multisite network. Many super admins have wished for this when creating content on different sites on the network. Sometimes you want to use an image you’ve already uploaded on another site. WordPress doesn’t make that easy but this plugin gives you that option.
These are just a few time savers for administrating your network. There are many more useful plugins and we’re constantly publishing tips, so I guess you’d better subscribe. ;)
4. Create a solid development environment
You need a place where you can build and break things without worrying about destroying your production site. You also will quite frequently find yourself needing to test plugins for multisite compatibility. If you are hosting an active publishing community and you make a feature available that hasn’t been tested, you may be in for a flood of bug reports and support requests. Save time by perfecting new features on your development environment first.
Some time ago I posted 10 Ways Set Up a Testing Environment for WordPress and many of those options have multisite capabilities. My personal favorite is DesktopServer, a product from ServerPress that makes it super easy to create a development environment. It even supports multisite sub-domain and domain mapping.
The BitNami WordPress Stack is another option. It’s an open source, self-contained package that has everything you need in order to create a development environment. It also supports WordPress multisite. Check out their thorough documentation for using Bitnami with multisite.
5. Set up regular automatic backups of your multisite network
There’s no way getting around this one. One day you’re going to need a solid backup of your multisite network and it had better be there waiting for you or else you’re screwed.
Not all backup solutions are compatible with multisite, but fortunately for you, we’ve nailed down a few solid options:
5 Backup Solutions for WordPress Multisite Networks – This article provides an overview of the multisite support for some of the most popular backup solutions available, including: BackupBuddy, VaultPress, Snapshot, BackWPup and Backup Scheduler.
6. Save time while managing multiple WordPress sites
Many people opt to use multisite because of how much time you can save in managing multiple WordPress sites from one core installation. Domain Mapping is perhaps one of the most efficient uses of multisite. It gives you the ability to map actual domains to sub-sites on your network.
Domain mapping works like magic to save you time in the long run. It allows you to maintain security updates for plugins, themes and the core software all in one place, instead of having to update multiple separate sites.
There are also many tips and tricks that you can employ to make managing your network faster and more efficient:
There’s no reason to be worried about having all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, when working with multisite. As long as you have regular backups in order, it’s all good. Sites are also not set in stone once they are a part of your network. If you find that you’re not saving time having one core to update, break them apart. You can always import or export sites into and out of the network as requirements change.
7. Automate your multisite network to make money
If you really want to make multisite work for you, one of the best ways is to set it up to create a new stream of income.
Creating plugins that help multisite networks make money is one of our specialties at WPMU DEV. We provide plugins for network admins that you simply cannot find anywhere else. Pro Sites, in particular, gives you everything you need to create your own WordPress.com style blog network where you can sell premium themes, premium plugins, extra storage, advertising, domain mapping and more. We use this very plugin on the massively successful Edublogs network and have made it available for anyone who is serious about monetizing multisite.
Other popular ways of making money with multisite include:
If you really want to make multisite work for you, all you need to do is find your passion and build a community around it. It takes a little bit of effort to do your homework and get the right tools into place, but the reward is that you’ll become a master of multisite networks, save yourself a ton of time and even make some money along the way.
Does it drive you crazy that network-activated plugins are not shown on multisite blogs?
Assessing which plugins are active in a WordPress multisite network can sometimes be a challenge. This is because plugins can be active on one site or network activated across all sites. However, the only place where you can see which plugins are network activated is within the network admin dashboard. This can be confusing because the individual sites’ plugin pages does not list network-activated plugins, even though they are operational on all sites.
When you’re working on a site within your network, it is not easy to get a full picture of all of the plugins that are active, since the network-activated plugins are not shown. If you were trying to troubleshoot a problem, you’d have to pull up both the individual site’s plugin listing page and the network admin plugins page to get all of the information you need.
A new plugin attempts to solve this problem by showing all active plugins on each site. jonradio Reveal Network Activated Plugins displays those plugins that are normally hidden by WordPress in order to make network management easier for super admins.
Network-activated plugins shown in the list with all other active plugins
Isn’t that handy? Having this information right in the plugins list for each site keeps you from having to click around so much. This is one plugin that I would activate on any WordPress multisite network because it makes your life as a super admin just a little more convenient. Any user with the ‘activate_plugins’ capability will be able to see network-activated plugins in each site’s plugin list.
jonradio Reveal Network Activated Plugins is available for free from the WordPress plugin repository. You have the option to network activate for all sites or turn it on only for a select few. This is a must-have for any super admin’s multisite toolbox, especially if you find yourself frequently troubleshooting plugin conflicts.
When Edublogs Campus first started hosting WordPress Multisite networks for schools and universities 5+ years ago, it was pretty much exclusively for blog networks.
But not so today.
With easy to customize themes and the user friendliness of the publishing process, we see WordPress being leveraged to meet dozens of web and technology needs.
Add domain mapping to your WordPress Multisite install
Sell domain names to your users :)
And if you also use Pro Sites then you can also allow domain mapping only for certain levels (so you can effectively charge twice, once to be able to domain map and the other to purchase domains), awesome stuff.
Comprehensive integration with pro Sites will knock your socks off
Overall we’re hopeful that this is going to really add to the Multisite networks out there.
And next up we’re looking at adding this into the signup process too… so visitors can sign up for new domains (maybe domains that have been automatically searched for too) just like at WordPress.com – and a little birdie told me that’s how they make most of their money, so it should be fun.
6. Finally, you’ll need to drop the following global tables in your database. phpMyAdmin is probably the easiest software to do this with you use cPanel, though you can use whatever method you like:
Managing multiple WordPress installations can be a drag. Remembering different sets of usernames and passwords, and having to install plugins and themes over and over again. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Setting up a fresh WordPress Multisite installation and creating new sub-sites isn’t all that hard, but what about migrating an existing collection of sites into a new or existing Multisite installation?
There are many reasons why you might want to do this, for example you can:
Save time. Instead of installing and upgrading WordPress, themes and plugins across many sites, you can do all of these things just once.
Easily manage your clients’ sites. If you manage sites for multiple clients, Multisite allows you to control all of your client sites from one place.
So how exactly do you migrate multiple blogs into Multisite? Let’s get started.
Like birds in migration, you too can easily migrate (your blogs, that is).
Basic Housekeeping
It’s best to start with some good ol’ fashioned spring cleaning.
Login to each of your single sites and delete old users, unwanted posts and spam comments. Doing this not only helps to reduce unwanted clutter, but will also keep your site trim for when you export it later. We’ll get to that further into this post.
Some plugins can conflict with the export process, generating an empty file or a partially complete file. It’s best to disable the plugins on your single-site blogs while you’re tidying up your sites.
Backup Your Sites
The next step is to back up your blogs in whatever way you are most familiar/comfortable with, whether you prefer to use cPanel, a database backup plugin like WPMU DEV’s Snapshot, a third-party site like VaultPress or just manually copying all your site’s files to a folder on your computer. This step ensures your site isn’t going to be lost if something goes wrong and you can easily restore it.
Export Your Blogs
Export your posts and pages with WordPress Exporter.
For each of your single site installations, go to Tools > Export. Select All Content and click Download Export Files. This will export all of the posts, pages, comments, custom fields, terms, navigation menus and custom posts for each site into a .XML file.
Keep in mind that widget configuration and blog/plugin settings, as well as your logo and menu navigation selections, are not exported in this method. It’s a good idea to make a note of these settings so you can edit them back later on.
Set Up Multisite
If you haven’t already got a Multisite installation set up, do that now. Get the latest version of WordPress and head over to the Codex for a full rundown on how to create a network.
Create Sites For Each Blog You Want to Import
Create a new site for each of the blogs you want to host. Go to My Sites > Network Admin > Sites and click Add New.
Enter in the site address, site title and admin email for each site, keeping consistent with your existing site names. It’s good to be absolutely sure before you click Add Site to confirm the details for each site because you don’t want to have to go back and rename your sub-domain later.
Import the Files For Each Blog
Go to the backend of each blog in your Multisite installation and import the corresponding .XML file you exported earlier (Tools > Import).
If you don’t already have the WordPress Importer installed, WP will prompt you to install it.
After you click Upload file and import, on the next screen check the box that will pull in photos and other attachments. If your media is still accessible on our single site installations, the WordPress Importer attempts to download them from the original server. WordPress export files don’t include the attachments in the backups file, just the posts and pages.
Copy Theme and Plugin Files
Copy any plugins and themes from your single site installations to the corresponding plugins and themes folders in your Multisite setup.
The next step is to copy the theme and plugin files from your single site installations to their respective new directories in your Multisite setup.
It’s easiest to do this via FTP or in cPanel using File Manager. Open up the wp-content folder for your Multisite installation and then go to Plugins. Copy the plugins from each of your blogs into this folder.
You will then need to network activate your plugins.
Do the same for your themes. Open up wp-content/themes and copy your blog themes into this folder.
It’s best to check your plugins are compatible with Multisite before copying them across. If a plugin is not supported, search for an alternative in the WordPress Plugin Repository or, better yet, have a look through WPMU DEV’s 140+ plugins.
Edit the Configuration Settings For Each Site
Your widget and plugins settings, as well as your preferred menu navigation, will be lost for each site and unfortunately there’s no way around this. You will need to reconfigure these settings for each of your sites so you can get them looking exactly as they did before.
This means updating the Customize options in the Appearance > Themes section, updating your logo and navigation, repositioning your widgets and editing the settings for each of your plugins.
Wrapping Up
While merging your sites into a Multisite installation can be a bit fiddly, once you’ve got everything set up, you’ll save heaps of time in the long run on things like installing and updating plugins and themes.
Migrating your sites should be a fairly straightforward process if you follow the steps above.
Why do you use Multisite? Tell us in the comments below.
We call it CampusPress, and it is the next big evolution from our sister company, Edublogs.
Being steeped in tradition doesn’t mean you can’t also be at the leading edge
Managed WordPress Multisite Hosting
CampusPress officially becomes the first fully managed WordPress hosting provider that specializes solely in WordPress Multisite.
What sets us apart from other hosting options is that we include a default group of plugins and themes that we support and maintain as well. There’s no need to purchase additional plugins and theme subscriptions, or decide between which plugins to use.
There’s also no headaches with plugin conflicts or upgrades breaking a site – we make sure that never happens.
We handle upgrades, caching, backups, user authentication, and end-user support.
While the majority of our customers are schools and universities, we also provide hosting for non-profits, businesses, and other organizations too.
Moving Beyond Blogging
Edublogs, as the name implies, has always been about blogging.
Educators’ personal blogs, class blogs, and student blogs.
But we found that many of our customers were using our platform, and WordPress, for much, much more.
Edublogs.org isn’t going anywhere and will continue to be the best and largest blog network in education. The brand new CampusPress.com will allow us to better meet the needs of those with our white-label and dedicated networks that wish to host websites, magazines, and so much more.
For example, check out these CampusPress hosted sites:
You might be interested in a bit of a back story – and knowing more about how Edublogs, CampusPress, and WPMU DEV are all related.
Edublogs really should not be called the ‘sister company’ of WPMU DEV, but rather its ‘mother company’. You see, without Edublogs, there would be no WPMU DEV.
Edublogs was established in 2005 as a blog network for education – one of the first WordPress MU networks ever, and even launching a week before WordPress.com!
We built tons of plugins and features for Edublogs that people were constantly asking us to make available.So, that is exactly why WPMU DEV was born – a place for us to release the plugins that we had developed for Edublogs. Many of our most popular plugins, like Pro Sites, Wiki, Google Analytics +, Ultimate Branding, and Domain Mapping would not be anything like they are today if it wasn’t for the fact that we build our plugins to actually use on our projects like Edublogs too.
Just as with how WordPress has come into its own as the king of all CMSs, our Edublogs users have been increasingly pushing their blogs to the limits, with amazing results.
We’d meet people, and get emails, that ask if they could use their blog for websites, online classes, social networks, and more. After so many of these types of questions, it was clear that the Edublogs name might be turning people away! And thus, the idea for CampusPress was born.
What’s Next?
The launch of CampusPress marks just the beginning of an exciting year planned for WPMU DEV and Edublogs.
Until then, tell the school where your children attend, or a friend of yours that is a faculty member at a college or university, and let them know they should check out CampusPress and bring WordPress to their school.
Better yet, get in touch here and ask us to set you up with a free trial.
Managing a WordPress Multisite network can be a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be if you have the right tools.
But what are the best tools for Multisite?
There’s always a lot of discussion on the WPMU DEV forums about this very topic, so I asked our support crew and developers what plugins they recommend people install on their network.
Whether you’re new to running a Multisite network or have been hosting your own network for some time, you’re sure to find many of the plugins below (in no particularly order) useful for managing your sites.
P.S. Yes, there are a lot of WPMU DEV plugins in this list. When I searched for plugins for this list I kept coming back to our own products. What can I say? We’ve got more than 140 plugins so some were bound to make this list.
What plugins do you find essential for your Multisite network? Tell us in the comments below.
This is a relatively new plugin, which includes more than 12 Multisite enhancements, such as:
- An “Add New” link under the plugins menu for super admins
- Adds several useful items to the Multisite Network Admin admin bar
- Shows which blogs have a particular plugin active on the network plugins page
- Shows which blogs have a particular theme active on the network themes page
Another nice feature is that it adds the favicon from the theme folder to the admin area to more easily identify blogs.
If you’re frequently setting up new sites on your network, New Blog Templates gives you the ability to create a template, or multiple templates, and then duplicate all the settings (posts, pages, themes, categories, tags, links, categories, etc) for every new site that is created.
It’s a great plugin if you want all of the sites on your network to use the same structure and plugins as well as a standard set of pages and posts.
Domain mapping is a great feature to offer your users as it allows them to be members of your network while having their own domain name. Domain Mapping is the only premium plugin that allows admins and users to search for, buy and map domains on any Multisite network.
Domain Mapping gives your users the option to map one or more domains to their site, so mysite.mainsite.com can become mysite.com. Users could also set up myothersite.com and myotherothersite.com to all point to their site on your network, all the while buying their domains from you.
Copying content between sites on your network is easy with Multisite Content Copier. Just follow the step-by-step menu to copy posts, pages, users and plugins across your entire network.
This plugin allows network admins to quickly and easily seed new sites with content, users and plugins without the hassle of doing it manually.
Autoblog is a great plugin for automated posting to WordPress from RSS feeds and it takes no time at all to set up. This plugin allows you to quickly post content to an unlimited number of sites from one place. Say, for example, you want to post WPMU DEV Blog posts to your site, you can do just that.
Run an unlimited number of different domains from one Multisite installation with Multi-Domains. You can also create sites at alternative domains to your main site or give your users the option to choose the domain they prefer.
After you install and active Multi-Domains, you can enter as many domains as you like and they will be automatically added to your signup and new blog creation forms.
Easily search for content across your network with Global Site Search. This plugin provides you with full indexing of your posts from across your network.
After you install and activate Global Site Search, it will automatically create a page called Site Search where anyone can search through your work.
Multisite Plugin Stats allows you to see what plugins your users are running on your Multisite installation. It’s especially useful if you’re trying to clean up unused plugins or work out plugin popularity.
Do you need to get in touch with your site users? Organizational Message Notifier allows you to send messages to blog admins within your network.
When you send out a message, every blog admin will see notifications until they mark the message as read. Super admins can also view who has not read a particular message and can delete notifications manually.
Track user posts and comments across your Multisite network with User Reports. This plugin allows you to create downloadable reports on any of your site’s members.
Pro Sites give you the power to create your own profitable blog or site hosting network, like WordPress.com
You can offer your users the chance to upgrade their sites for a fee and access features like premium themes, plugins, extra storage, domain mapping or simply removing advertising.
This is a powerful plugin and definitely worth checking out.
This simple plugin allows you to toggle the backend menus so you can control what your users see when they login. What’s it’s really useful for is simplifying the admin menu across your network.
You can also disable menu items like Add Users, Themes and Permalinks, which you might not want your users messing with.
User Role Editor allows you to easily change any user role in your network, except administrator. You can assign capabilities by checking options for particular role to suit your network’s needs.
You can add new capabilities and remove capabilities leftover from unused plugins.
The latest version of Jetpack introduced support for Multisite. In the past, super admins had to manage the connections on an individual site basis, even though Jetpack could be activated network-wide. Now you can administer all your connections from your super admin accounts.
Disable Comments allows you to disable comments on any post type (posts, pages attachments etc) across your network so your users can’t override the settings for individual posts.
This plugin is great if you run a Multisite network with sites that don’t require comments.
Track and view Google Analytics statistics for your entire multisite network. Google Analytics + puts all the important statistics right in front of you with beautiful charts and graphs in your WordPress dashboard.
You can also combine this plugin with Domain Mapping to collect data for sub-domains and mapped domains.
Ultimate Facebook is a fantastic plugin for integrating Facebook into your Multisite network. You can allow users to sign up to your site with their Facebook details, autopost to their Facebook accounts and import comments made on Facebook.
W3 Total Cache is one of the most popular caching plugins for WordPress. Caching is the best way to easily improve your users experience without having to make change to your site’s content.
WP Super Cache is an alternative plugin and automatically works globally.
Snapshot is like Apple’s Time Machine, but for your WordPress site. This easy-to-use plugin is Multisite compatible and allows you to back backup snapshots of anything you want (settings, content, files etc) so you can quickly restore your content at any time.
This plugin’s features include the ability to save your snapshots to Dropbox and Amazon S3.
Multisite Privacy gives you full control over privacy on your network. It adds four more levels of privacy and allows you to control them across all of the sites on your network. You can also choose whether to allow your users to override these settings.
Anti-Splog allows you to stop and kill spam blogs and was originally built for Edublogs.
It works using the Anti-Splog API, which evaluates new signups and gives them a slog certainty number. If that number is greater than the sensitivity preference you set in the settings (the default is 80 per cent), the blog gets spammed.
The WordPress admin area got somewhat of a makeover in version 3.8, but – at least for me and maybe others who were using MP6 long before it was merged into core – the novelty has already worn off.
It’s easy enough to add new themes and plugins to customize the front-end of our sites, but what about the backend?
Customizing the backend of WordPress with an admin theme is a simple way to give your install a fresh look and is also handy for developers who are creating WordPress sites for clients and want to simplify the backend.
In this post, we’ll look at some of the free and premium WordPress admin themes available. If you haven’t used an admin theme before, you’ll be interested to know they actually come as plugins.
Do you use an admin theme? If so, which one? Tell us in the comments below.
Forest, released earlier this year, offers a relaxing forest-inspired admin design complete with a flat retina layout.
If you’re not too keen on the existing background, you can upload your own custom background. You can also adjust the darkness level and play with unlimited colours.
Forest also allows you to change the login background and logo and use custom Google fonts.
Micropanel 2 is a clean, minimalistic and classy admin theme. This is the second version of this theme and includes optimization improvements.
This theme is responsive and Multisite compatible. There are basic theme customization settings that allow you to change the theme’s main logo and also update the login page logo.
This Multisite-compatible theme allows you to offer your users a customized dashboard look.
Retina Press features a clean design and a jQuery animated accordion menu, along with retina support. You can also replace the login logo with your own for re-brand your site.
The WP Quick admin theme is feature-packed and promises everything you need to make the admin area “fresh.” Essentially, this plugin allows you to rebrand the WordPress backend.
The theme includes many options, such as the ability to customize colors and fonts, and remove update notifications and other backend distractions. You can also upload your own admin log and default avatar.
Like other admin themes, you can also customize the login page with your own logo. Plus, this theme is Multisite compatible.
This simple plugin allows you to style the admin area with your own customized look. EZ WordPress comes with two color options – light and dark – and you can also add an accent color.
Bootstrap Admin is a clean, minimalistic admin theme based on Twitter’s Bootstrap, and created by our very own support crew member Aristeides Stathopoulos.
This theme was built for the magazi.org network of stores and is Multisite compatible.
It features general styling of the admin area, admin menu sub-menus as bootstrap popovers, bootstrap icons, and buttons thumbing.
It also includes optimizations for WPMU DEV’s Pro Sites and MarketPress plugins.
This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning WPMU DEV’s Easy Blogging plugin.
Easy Blogging allows you to completely customize the look and feel of the admin area. This plugin is ideal for developers who are creating client sites and want to simplify the WordPress backend.
Once installed, activate “Easy Mode” for a more user-friendly experience with new icons and tooltips. The plugin also has a fantastic wizard for walking the user through common actions. You can even customize you own wizard mode walkthrough and add help links via drag and drop.
This plugin is Multisite compatible and great for networks hosting WordPress newbies.
Using WordPress in a local server environment is a must if you regularly test or develop themes and plugins.
Not only will your local sites run faster, but testing new features on your local machine will be safer than testing them on a live site.
Setting up WordPress locally isn’t difficult and will save you a lot of time if you’re constantly installing and uninstalling WordPress online.
In this tutorial I’ll walk you through how to set up MAMP on OS X, including installing MAMP, basic MAMP configuration, creating a MySQL database, and installing WordPress. I’ve included optional steps for setting up Multisite.
Set up MAMP and run WordPress locally on OS X.
What is MAMP?
MAMP, which stands for Macintosh, Apache, MySQL and PHP, is an application that allows you to install a local server environments on your Mac OS X computer.
WordPress isn’t a stand-alone application and needs server software to run. MAMP provides the necessary server setup so you can run WordPress on your computer rather than on the internet.
Installing MAMP
Head to the MAMP website and download MAMP. There’s also a premium version, but we’ll stick with the free version in this tutorial.
The MAMP homepage.
The MAMP file is 245MB. Once downloaded, install MAMP like you would any other software for OS X.
Once installed, launch MAMP. The software may ask you about using MAMP PRO. Just ignore this and continue using the free version for now.
The MAMP home screen is fairly minimal.
You will need to fix your MAMP settings before you can install WordPress.
1. Click on “Preferences”. Another window will pop up. Click on “Ports” and then click “Set Apache & MySQL ports to 80 & 3306.” These are the recommended ports, rather than using the defaults.
Set the ports for Apache and MySQL
Next, click on the “Apache” tab and choose the location where you will install WordPress. The default location is Macintosh HD/Applications/MAMP/htdocs. This is similar to the public_html folder on your web hosting server.
I like to keep things organized, so I set my document root to Macintosh HD/Users/Rae/Documents/Test Site.
Set the document root for your WordPress install.
Creating a MySQL Database for WordPress
Before you install WordPress, you will need a database. MAMP ships with phpMyAdmin so we’ll use that to create a new database.
1. Open MAMP and click on “Start Servers.” You may be prompted to enter your computer’s username and password.
2. In your browser (Chrome or Safari or whatever you use), enter http://localhost/phpmyadmin/. The phpMyAdmin interface will appear. Click on “Databases.”
Create a new database in phpMyAdmin
3. In the text area under “Create database” enter a name for your database and click “Create.” I’ve called my database “WP”. You don’t need to worry about any other options so you can close phpMyAdmin.
Download and Set Up WordPress
Download the latest version of WordPress. Extract the files to the document root folder you selected earlier. In my case, I’ll unpack all my WordPress files to Macintosh HD/Users/Rae/Documents/Test Site.
Unpack your WordPress files into your document root folder.
Open wp-config-sample.phpand rename it wp-config.php. Open the file and scroll down until you see the following lines:
Update your wp-config.php file with your database details.
These lines of code define the login details for your database. Replace “database_name_here” with the name of your database, which in my case is “WP.”
Replace “username_here” and “password_here” with “root,” which is the default username and password.
Save the file.
In your browser, go to http://localhost. You should see the welcome screen for the famous five minute WordPress installation process.
Set up WordPress using the famous five minute install process.
Enter your details and click “Install WordPress.”
Your WordPress installation is now complete!
Setting up WordPress Multisite
Having Multisite setup on a local machine provides not only a way to test themes and plugins in a Multisite environment, but also a quick and easy way to have multiple sites running at once.
Open your wp-config.php file again and add/edit the following lines to activate Multisite’s installation mode:
Activate Multisite installation mode.
Open MAMP and ensure your servers are running.
Login to your localhost site and under “Tools” you will now have a new option, “Network Setup.”
Enabling Multisite will add a new “Network Setup” sub-menu item to WordPress.
Enter a name for your network and your email address, then click “Install.”
WordPress will prompt you to edit your wp-config.php and .htaccess files.
Following the onscreen instructions, open wp-config.php and add the following lines underneath your previous edit:
Edit your wp-config file to get Multisite up and running.
Next, open .htaccess. If you can’t find it, make sure hidden files are displaying on your computer.
Your .htaccess file should look like this:
Edit your .htaccess file to complete your multisite installation.
Multisite should now be enabled and working on your WordPress site!
Your Multisite network should now be up and running!
Summing Up
MAMP provides an easy way to run a local server environment on your OS X machine, allowing you to test and develop locally, rather than installing WordPress online. It will also save you time since you won’t have to install and uninstall WordPress each time you test themes and plugins.
MAMP is free, but there’s also a premium version that makes it even easier to set up databases and other options so you can use WordPress on your local machine.
Tomorrow, I’ll walk through how to set up DesktopServer on OS X for WordPress localhost development. And not to forget Windows, I’ll look at WAMP this week as well.
WordPress multisite installs might use a single codebase but when it comes to media each site operates in its own silo.
If you are using multisite to publish multiple sites then reusing media across your sites either means inserting with a url or loading the image up twice. Hardly satisfactory.
In this Weekend WordPress project, we’ll take a look at how to share images, video and audio across your site, saving you considerable time, trouble and disk space.
Sharing media across your multisite has enormous time saving benefits
Why is this important? In a default multisite install each site has its own media library, with no built-in capabilities to easily access media from other sites. The choices are either use the Insert from URL facility or load up the image into each site.
If you have a widely used set of images, such as logos or icons or portraits, then you have to either link to the original source (and trust that the URL doesn’t change) or load each item up in the site where you want to use it.
Clearly, the better option is to be able to select media from any site on the multisite network for insertion into a post and to not have to duplicate it. And preferably, have the URL look and feel as if it is local to the post’s site.
This is exactly what Network Shared Media provides.
Installing and network activating the plugin (there’s no need to activate on the individual sites) adds a new option, Network Shared Media to the Add Media dialog:
A new Network Shared Media option give you access to any network site’s media
Clicking on this new option, displays the media as normal but creates a new menu bar with links to each site on the network. Clicking on a site brings up the media for that site.
Selecting and inserting a media item is exactly as before (clicking on the Insert into Post button) but what’s interesting is that the plugin localizes the URLs, so although there is only one source, the URL is for the current blog, not the original.
For example, here’s the img tag and a tag for an image inserted into a post on Blog A but that physically actually resides in the primary site’s uploads folder (http://www.multisite.dev/wp-content/uploads).
The only real drawback with the plugin is that it’s functionality doesn’t extend to the Featured Image selection tool.
This is not really the plugin’s fault as, and I hadn’t ever noticed this before, the Featured Image dialog is not the same as the Add Media button. It only allows for picking directly from the site’s media library or uploading a new item and doesn’t support Add Media functionality such as Insert from URL.
One For The Multisite Publisher’s Essential Plugin List?
If you use WordPress in multisite mode to manage several websites, then this plugin offers a time-saving way of sharing common media across those sites.
For that reason alone, it’s a prime contender for the Essential Plugin list for WordPress multisite operators.
If you’ve ever set up a WordPress Multisite install and then decided to swap from sub-directories to sub-domains, or the other way around, you would know it’s not as simple as clicking a few buttons.
Unfortunately, the “Network Setup” page in the backend of Multisite doesn’t give you an easy way to switch. Yeah, it’s frustrating.
If you try to make the switch manually, it’s likely you’ll be met with errors that are somewhat difficult to decipher, and the WordPress Codex doesn’t clearly spell out how to make the change.
In today’s post, we’ll go through the steps you need to take to switch your sub-directory and sub-domain settings.
Swap your network structure.
Before You Change Your Installation
There are a few things you need to do before we get started;
Back up your current WordPress installation
Make sure your installation is in the root of your server
Disable all plugins
Change your site’s URL to not include “www.”, and confirm your domain name
Consider the possible risks of making the switch, and decide if it’s safe to continue
Delete the Multisite code in “wp-config.php”, and “.htaccess” files
Remove any Multisite tables in your database
Migrating Your Network to the Root
If you would like to use Multisite, it’s much better if your installation is at the root of your server, as in “yourdomain.com,” rather than “yourdomain.com/wordpress.” This will eliminate any errors when trying to access sites in your network. If not, you will see this error message on the “Network Setup” page:
“Because your install is in a directory, the sites in your WordPress network must use sub-directories. Warning! The main site in a sub-directory install will need to use a modified permalink structure, potentially breaking existing links.“
This error occurs because your Multisite installation is already in a sub-directory. For example, “yourdomain.com/wordpress.” In this case, Multisite will force you to use sub-directories.
Your Multisite network will run much smoother if you remove the “www.” prefix from your domain. You don’t have to, but it will avoid the problem of having sub-domains show up as “site1.www.yourdomain.com”, for example. This doesn’t always happen, but if it does it’s not very pretty, aesthetically.
Your site will work either way, but if you’d like to remove the prefix for a smoother experience, you just need to change your “WordPress Address (URL)” and “Site Address (URL)” fields under Settings > General in your admin area.
Lastly, you will want to make sure you are using a valid domain name that is connected to your website, and not an IP address or “localhost”. You cannot switch to a sub-domain install if you are not using a valid domain.
The Risks of Making the Switch
If you currently have sub-directories installed, and you wish to switch to sub-domains, the risk here is if you have some sub-domains currently existing. It will create a conflict, and neither site will be displayed.
For example, if you currently have your blog at the URL “blog.yourdomain.com”, you switch your multisite install to sub-domains, and you create a new site at the same “blog.yourdomain.com”, it will result in an error when you try to access that site address. This can especially be an issue if you allow visitors to register for their own sites.
If you don’t have any sub-domains currently existing in your install, then you’re okay to go ahead. If you do, you can still switch, but you will have to add the sub-domains individually. This is only really a problem if you allow your users to create sites on their own, or if you have a huge company and you need this to be automated to cut down on labour costs.
Similarly, if you currently have sub-domains installed, and you’re trying to switch to sub-directories, you may run into the same problem if you currently already have some paths defined. In other words, you currently have some sub-directories, such as “yourdomain.com/blog”, or “yourdomain.com/news”.
You will not be able to view a site if you created a new site with the same names, such as “blog”, or “news” in this example. You certainly still can make the switch, as long as you do not have sub-directories, or you know you will not be making new sites with the same paths.
Removing Multisite Code in Your Files
Navigate to your “wp-config.php” file in the base of your WordPress installation, and remove the multisite code, then save the file. It will look something like this:
It will also be located above the following line of code, which you should not delete:
Save the file, then head over to your “.htaccess” file, which is also in the base of your WordPress installation. Delete everything in it that is a part of the multisite installation. You’ll delete code that looks very similar to this:
Save this file, and continue to the next step, which is to delete the necessary tables in your database.
Removing Multisite Tables
Head over to the “Databases” section after logging into cPanel, and click the “phpMyAdmin” button. Click on your WordPress database on the left hand side to reveal a list of your database tables in the main content area.
You can see that I have selected a database in this image, among the three that are listed. It’s the one for my main WordPress install. You may have to look up the name of your database if you’re not sure which database you should select. I named my databases in a way that would help me identify them for situations such as this one.
Now find the following tables in the list, and drop them:
wp_blogs
wp_blog_versions
wp_registration_log
wp_signups
wp_site
wp_sitemeta
If you have multiple sites already installed, and you’re wanting to switch the path of your sites, there’s more for you to think about. Switching the path of your network, and in effect, all the sites you have created, may cause problems. There is also more work to be done.
If you would like to continue, then you will also need to remove these tables from your database:
wp_#_commentmeta
wp_#_comments
wp_#_links
wp_#_options
wp_#_postmeta
wp_#_posts
wp_#_terms
wp_#_term_relationships
wp_#_term_taxonomy
Keep in mind that “#” will be replaced with the ID number of your sites. For example, if you have three sites in total, you will need to look for the tables “wp_2_commentmeta”, and “wp_3_commentmeta” along with the other ones on the list.
Once you have located the tables, you can choose to drop them one by one, or select all of them using the check box to the left of the table’s name. You can see I started doing this in the image below:
If you selected all the applicable tables in the list rather than dropping them individually, scroll down to the bottom of the page. Select the box labelled “with selected”, and click on “drop”.
Either way, confirm that you would like to delete the tables on the next page that appears. Once complete, you can begin to re-install your network.
Switching Your Installation
The first step is to allow for wildcard sub-domains if you are switching to allow for sub-domains. This will allow any new sub-domains to be created automatically when a new site is created.
The WordPress Codex has a page explaining how to do this in various web hosts, which you can find here: Configuring Wildcard Subdomains; however, it’s not very detailed on how to do this in cPanel, so I’ll quickly run through it for you now.
After logging into cPanel, navigate to the “Domains” section, and click on the “Subdomains” button.
Then choose your domain from the drop down box if it’s not shown automatically. In the “Subdomain” box, add an asterisk (“*”). Choose the root directory folder where your network should be installed, and click “Create”. You can see an example of this in the image below.
As I’ve previously mentioned, you don’t necessarily need to do this, if, and only if you wish to add sub-domain sites manually to avoid conflicts. If you have sub-domains already installed, and you try to set up a wildcard sub-domain, the already existing sub-domains will redirect to the main site.
The only way you can skip this step is if you wish to set up your sites manually, having its own folder (sub-directory), which also means you cannot allow users to register for sites on their own. This is also where you need to be careful when deciding to switch your installation because already existing paths will cause an error if a new path of the same name is later created, as well.
If your install is over a month old, but you haven’t built any sites, then it’s a lot less likely that you’ll run into the conflicts I described. If you’ve decided you won’t have any of these conflicts, then go ahead and proceed with the steps I just outlined.
If you are moving to a sub-directory install, consider removing the wildcard domains if you have them set up already. It likely will not conflict with your new settings, but it keeps things neat and organized for the future.
Now, in your “wp-config.php” file, navigate to the bottom of the page where you will find this comment among the code:
Above this line, add the following code if you would like to re-install your network with sub-domains:
Or, if you would like to re-install your network with sub-directories, use this code instead:
Save the file, and go back to your admin dashboard. Under Settings > Network Setup, follow the instructions that appear to replace your current code in your “.htaccess” file. You will need to update this file in order for the switch to work.
Yours will not look exactly the same, but this is the structure in which the page will show it. In older versions of WordPress, there used to be the “# BEGIN WordPress”, and “# END WordPress” opening and closing tags you needed to keep intact, but as of version 3.5 and up, you no longer need to include them.
Now you’re good to go, and you should see these changes take affect when you add a new site. You’ll see that you’re prompted to enter in a site address in the form of a sub-domain, or sub-directory as per your particular install.
Adding Dynamic 301 Redirects
In the midst of switching the structure of your website, you may be wondering how to clean up old URLs and redirect them to your new website structure to avoid messy 404 errors. The solution is simple, and all that’s required is a bit of code, and your “.htaccess” file.
When you open your “.htaccess” file, be sure to enter the code at the top, under “RewriteEngine On”. Add it if it’s not already there, but it most likely will be. If you add code before this line, your redirects will not execute properly.
In the above code we are using 301 redirects from sub-directories to subdomains. The first example, starting at line five, is the structure you need to take if you wish to omit any query strings from the end of the URL. You would generally want to do this if you are redirecting a single page without pretty permalinks.
If you want to keep the query strings attached to the new URL, then follow the structure in the second example, which starts on line 10. This is useful if you have plugins which post actions on the page you are trying to redirect. You will want to keep the query strings attached to avoid possible errors.
Below is an example of 301 redirects if you’re switching from sub-domains to sub-directories. The same structure applies to this example, as I just described for the previous one. I labelled each example so it’s easier to tell the difference between the two.
For each page you want to redirect, you’ll need to repeat the code, and choose the three lines which apply to you; either including query strings, or excluding query strings in the new URL. Each new redirect should be below the last.
You also probably noticed there is a page id included in the code. You can find this for yourself by heading over to Pages > All Pages in the admin area of your site. By hovering over the title of one of your pages, you will see the ID number and the type included in a link that will appear in the status bar at the bottom of your browser.
Instead of using a “page_id” as shown in the examples, you could replace this to redirect blog posts, or even categories. No matter what you use, the idea is essentially the same.
From here on out, you shouldn’t have any issues with pages that have the same path, such as what might happen when switching from sub-domains to sub-directories. You also shouldn’t have any issues with any other pages, either.
Some Final Thoughts
It will take some time, but these steps should help you to successfully change the paths for your network, whether you are switching from sub-domains to sub-directories, or vice versa. If you made a mistake and chose the wrong option on a fresh install, then it’s best to un-install all of WordPress and start over again. It will require less work.
If your multisite installation is less than a month old, you will have the option to change your network’s path without having to go through all these steps. Lucky you!
If you have a lot going on on your pre-existing sites, then you’re more likely to run into conflicts with your pre-existing paths and sub-domains. You may inadvertently create two paths of the same name during the switch, which will cause errors, so you definitely need to do some planning before deciding to make the switch.
In a future version of WordPress, you will notice that you will not be limited when it comes to switching from sub-domains to sub-directories when your install is a month old. For now, you’ll need to follow these instructions if you’d like to make the switch.
What do you think? Is it worth the trouble to switch paths of your network, or should you just be happy with what you have already? Post your answer in the comments below.
Backing up your WordPress site is essential. Without it, you run the risk of losing all of your hard work if something goes wrong. If your hosting provider loses your data, your site is hacked or you simply want to roll back to an earlier version of your site, keeping regular backups will save you a lot of work – and a lot of stress.
But backing up isn’t something you’re going to want to keep on doing manually. Keeping backups only works if it’s automated, with regular snapshots being taken of your site so that you have constant access to a recent backup you can restore if things go wrong. Which is where backup plugins come in.
In this post I’ll review seven of the top backup plugins for WordPress. All of these are premium or freemium (meaning there’s a free version and a paid for version), because when I was researching this post I found that if you want a backup plugin that’ll make the process of backing up and restoring your site quick and easy, you generally have to pay for it. And this is something that’s worth paying for – imagine what it would cost you if you had to take time out to recreate your site from scratch or even worse, your clients’ sites?
Disclaimer: I’m sure there are many readers who use plugins not on this list, including free ones, and are perfectly happy with them. As with all reviews, there is going to be an element of subjectivity in this post and my reviews will reflect my experience of researching or testing these plugins.
What Makes a Great Backup Plugin?
In this post I’ve focused on plugins which make the process of backing up, migrating and restoring your site easy, reliable and hassle-free. The plugins I’ll rate most highly will have the following features:
Automated backup scheduling, with the flexibility for you to choose what you back up and how often.
A choice of locations to store your backups, including third party services such as Dropbox and Amazon S3.
Backups stored for as long as you need with no time limit.
Straightforward migration or restoring via the WordPress admin screens or the provider’s website.
Quality one to one support.
Detailed documentation on the provider’s website.
Flexible billing plans (where appropriate), with monthly or annual options and different prices for different needs.
Support for WordPress Multisite without having to pay extra for each site in your network.
Not all of the plugins I’ve reviewed here meet all of those criteria, but what I’ve listed above is what the ideal plugin will boast. So let’s take a look at some plugins.
Flexible automated backups, with the option to have multiple snapshots with different content and regularity
Support for third party storage services including Dropbox, Amazon S3, FTP/sFTP, Google Drive and GreenQloud
No limit on how long backups are stored
One click migration and restore from the WordPress admin
One-to-one support with fast response times
Documentation and how to videos
Option to buy just this plugin for a month or to subscribe to the full suite of WPMU DEV themes and plugins annually
WordPress Multisite support at no extra cost per site
The Bad
Annual subscription can be expensive if you don't need access to the full range of WPMU DEV themes and plugins
Ratings
Support:5/5
Flexibility:5/5
Storage Options:4.5/5
Ease of Restoration:5/5
Ease of Migration:5/5
Price & Plans:3.5/5
Multisite:5/5
Overall:4.7/5
The Bottom Line
A great backup plugin, which offers all of the features in my wish list. Restoring and migration are both done with one click and full Multisite support is included without you having to pay for each site in your network. The only downside is the cost if you're just looking for a backup plugin and don't want to subscribe to the full range of WPMU DEV themes and plugins. But if you do already subscribe to WPMU DEV (and if you're here there's a reasonable chance that you do), then Snapshot is effectively free!
Backups run in the background with no input from the user
One-click restore and migration
Monthly or annual billing
Storage on Automattic's own servers
One-to-one support
Support for WordPress Multisite – but at extra cost
The Bad
No option to store your data using third party services
Documentation is less comprehensive than for some other plugins
Each site in a Multisite Network is charged as a separate site, which can add up
Ratings
Support:5/5
Storage Options:2/5
Flexibility:2/5
Ease of Restoration:5/5
Ease of Migration:5/5
Price and Plans:4/5
Multisite:3/5
Overall:3.7/5
The Bottom Line
VaultPress is Automattic's backup offering and uses the same servers that wordpress.com sites are stored on, so comes with that peace of mind. However, if you want the flexibility to store your data elsewhere or to choose what you back up and when, this won't be the plugin for you. Backups are managed via your WordPress dashboard on the valuators site (rather than in the WordPress admin), which will suit some people but not others, and while Multisite is supported, each site in your network is charged as a separate site.
Flexible storage options with the ability to select what's backed up and when
Support for third party storage including Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive, FTP/SFTP and email.
One-click restore from the ManageWP dashboard
One to one support via tickets
Monthly and annual billing options
Extra services included such as SEO and security checks
The Bad
Migrations are done via cPanel and FTP - no 1-click migration
No support for WordPress Multisite
Ratings
Support:5/5
Storage Options:5/5
Flexibility:4/5
Ease of Restoration:4/5
Ease of Migration:1/5
Price & Plans:5/5
Multisite:0.5/5
Overall:3.5/5
The Bottom Line
ManageWP isn't designed just as a backup service but backups are one of the things it offers. It offers great value for the features on offer although it doesn't make migration easy and there's no support for Multisite networks, as ManageWP is designed as an alternative to Multisite.
Automated backups with flexible options for scheduling and content
Support for third party storage services including Amazon S3, Dropbox, Backspace Cloud, FTP or email.
Online documentation and tutorials
Custom backup profiles so you can backup different files or tables at different intervals
Flexible pricing depending on the number of sites to be backed up
Extra tools including individual file restore, malware scan and database mass text replacement
The Bad
Migration and restore involves uploading a script – no options for one–click restore
Support via forums – not as user-friendly as for some services
No support for WordPress Multisite
No monthly payment option
Ratings
Support:4/5
Flexibility:4/5
Storage Options:5/5
Ease of Restoration:3/5
Ease of Migration:3/5
Price & Plans:3/5
Multisite:0.5/5
Overall:3.2/5
The Bottom Line
BackupBuddy is hugely popular and includes an impressive range of tools for backing up and restoring your site in the way that works for you. However, the process for restoring a site is complicated for novice users and there's no support for WordPress Multisite.
Backups are stored on BlogVault's servers and on Amazon S3 and (optionally) Dropbox
Online documentation – but not as comprehensive as for some plugins
Supports Multisite – but only up to three sites
One to one support
The Bad
Backups only stored for 30 days
Restores are done manually using FTP and phpMyAdmin
No option to exclude specific files or tables from backups
Limited range of third party storage services supported
If you have more than three sites (i.e. your main domain and two sites) in your Multisite network, you'll have to pay again
Ratings
Support:4/5
Flexibility:1.5/5
Storage Options:3/5
Ease of Restoration:1/5
Ease of Migration:1/5
Price & Plans:3/5
Multisite:3/5
Overall:2.35/5
The Bottom Line
BlogVault claims to be the best backup plugin for WordPress, but it falls down on the process for restoring or migrating a site, which is no simpler than with any free plugin. It also doesn't let you store backups for more than 30 days and can cost a lot for Multisite users with large networks. Like VaultPress it stores your data on its own servers and you access it via their website, but it doesn't offer the same peace of mind as a provider as well known and trusted as Automattic.
Multiple storage options available with the premium version
The Bad
Backing up files didn't work when I tested it – only the database was backed up
Restores and migrations have to be done manually using phpMyAdmin
No monthly payment option
Online documentation isn't very clearly worded
Ratings
Support:4/5
Storage Options:4/5
Flexibility:1/5
Ease of Restoration:1/5
Ease of Migration:1/5
Price & Plans:4/5
Multisite:3/5
Overall:2.55/5
The Bottom Line
BackUpWP is a "freemium" plugin in that there is a free version (BackWPUp Free) available in the WordPress plugin repository and a premium version (BackWPUp Pro) which you can download from their website. Both of these have the same basic features for backups, restores and migrations with the premium version supporting more third party storage services and including wizards for testing. However, when I tested the free version, it only backed up my database and not my files, which was a serious shortcoming. The process for restoring and migrating a site is also too complicated for a premium plugin, with users having to do these manually.
Flexible backup options – choose what to back up and when
Range of third party storage options with premium version including FTP/SFTP, Dropbox, Googe Drive, Amazon S3, Dreamhost Dream Objects, Rackspace Cloud and Microsoft Azure
Free version available
Email support for free and premium users (with priority given to premium users)
Backups managed via WordPress admin
Online documentation – above average for free plugins, not as comprehensive as for some other premium plugins
Multisite Support
The Bad
Restore and migration has to be done manually via FTP and phpMyAdmin
Plans just for single site or unlimited sites, with nothing in between
Ratings
Support:4/5
Storage Options:5/5
Flexibility:5/5
Ease of Restoration:1/5
Ease of Migration:1/5
Price & Plans:4.5/5
Multisite:5/5
Overall:3.65/5
The Bottom Line
BackWordPressUp is another freemium plugin, with the same basic functionality available in the free and premium versions. By buying the premium version you have access to more storage options as well as priority support. Like the other freemium plugins reviewed here it doesn't offer one-click restore or migration so it's not suitable for novice users, but it is more reliable than BackWPUp so if you're looking for a free plugin, this is the one I'd recommend.
Overall – Backup Plugins Compared
Support
Snapshot:5/5
VaultPress:5/5
ManageWP:5/5
BackupBuddy:4/5
BlogVault:4/5
BackWPUp:4/5
BackUpWordPress:4/5
Storage Options
Snapshot:4.5/5
VaultPress:2/5
ManageWP:5/5
BackupBuddy:5/5
BlogVault:3/5
BackWPUp:4/5
BackUpWordPress:5/5
Flexibility
Snapshot:5/5
VaultPress:2/5
ManageWP:5/5
BackupBuddy:4/5
BlogVault:1.5/5
BackWPUp:1/5
BackUpWordPress:5/5
Ease of Restoration
Snapshot:5/5
VaultPress:5/5
ManageWP:4/5
BackupBuddy:3/5
BlogVault:1/5
BackWPUp:1/5
BackUpWordPress:1/5
Ease of Migration
Snapshot:5/5
VaultPress:5/5
ManageWP:1/5
BackupBuddy:3/5
BlogVault:1/5
BackWPUp:1/5
BackUpWordPress:1/5
Price & Plans
Snapshot:3.5/5
VaultPress:4/5
ManageWP:5/5
BackupBuddy:3/5
BlogVault:3/5
BackWPUp:4/5
BackUpWordPress:4.5/5
Overall
Snapshot:4.65/5
VaultPress:3.85/5
ManageWP:4.15/5
BackupBuddy:3.65/5
BlogVault:2.25/5
BackWPUp:2.5/5
BackUpWordPress:3.4/5
Summary
Of all the plugins I’ve reviewed here, Snapshot is the one which comes the closest to meeting all of my criteria – in fact, it meets all of the criteria except for price, as it is expensive if you don’t want access to all of WPMU DEV’s other plugins and themes. However, I believe that secure, reliable and user-friendly backups are worth every penny you spend on them so I think that it’s worth the money.
If your budget is tight, however, and you decide to go for the free version of a freemium plugin, I would certainly recommend the BackUpWordPress plugin. Like all free plugins it requires you to restore or migrate your site manually, but it’s far more reliable than the BackWPUp and has better documentation.
It’s worth considering which plugins will work best for different WordPress setups:
If you’re running Multisite, Snapshot is the only plugin which will include all of the sites in your network for no extra fee and let you make one-click restores.
If you’re running a single site installation and prefer not to set up backups yourself but have it all done for you, then VaultPress will meet your needs.
If you’re running single site and want your data stored where you want it but prefer using the plugin’s website to manage your backups, then ManageWP could be for you.
If you want to manage your single site backups from the WordPress admin and have easy options for restoring your site, then I’d recommend Snapshot.
If you don’t want to spend any money and are comfortable restoring your site manually, then I’d recommend BackUpWordPress, which gives you the option to start out with the free version and upgrade if you want more flexibility later.
What do you use to backup your WordPress website? Let us know your favorite backup solution in the comments below.
Here at WPMU DEV, we’re more than a bit keen on WordPress Multisite.
We’ve been developing plugins for it since the old days when it was WordPress MU, and we use it to power Edublogs, a huge network of blogs for educators and students.
Personally I also use Multisite a lot. I use it to host client websites, to create sites demonstrating techniques I outline in my books and tutorials, and to keep everything in one place.
In this guide to Multisite I’m going to show you everything you need to know to get started with Multisite and create your own network of blogs or sites.
I’ll cover:
What is Multisite and how is it different from regular WordPress?
Uses for Multisite (with some examples)
When not to use Multisite
How to activate Multisite on a new or existing WordPress installation
Creating blogs in your network
Managing your network, including installing themes and plugins, creating sites and setting up domain mapping
Plugins to make Multisite even better.
But first, let’s get some terminology straight. In this post I’m going to use the word network and site to refer to two different things:
Network refers to the entire Multisite network, i.e. your WordPress installation
Site refers to one of the blogs or sites created as part of the network.
So when I refer to your site, I don’t mean your whole network of sites, but just one of the sites on it. Each network will have a main site, which is created when you install WordPress and which will probably use the main domain for your WordPress installation: that’s still a site. I’ll explain this in more detail as we go along.
So now we’ve got that sorted, let’s take a look at Multisite!
What is Multisite?
The Codex defines WordPress Multisite as:
“A feature of WordPress 3.0 and later versions that allows multiple virtual sites to share a single WordPress installation.”
This means that by installing WordPress just once on your server, you can run as many sites as you want, and I really mean as many as you want. At the time of writing, WordPress.com hosts approximately 37 million sites, and our own Edublogs.org hosts nearly 3 million educational sites. You won’t be able to host millions of sites on a standard Multisite installation though – later in this post I’ll cover some plugins and techniques you can use to host large numbers of sites.
The great thing about Multisite is that the WordPress installation itself is almost exactly the same as a standard installation: it has the same folder structure, the same core files and the same code base. This means that installing a Multisite network isn’t much more complicated than installing a standard WordPress site, and updating Multisite is exactly the same as updating any WordPress site. All of your network’s themes and plugins are stored just once, no matter how many sites you use them on, meaning you’ll be using a lot less server space than if you used a separate WordPress installation for each site.
But there are some differences in three areas: in the admin screens and the way you use them, in the files in your WordPress installation, and in the database tables.
How the Multisite Admin Screens Are Different
When you activate Multisite, some extra screens will be added to your admin, for managing the network. You can see below the there’s a special dashboard for managing the network.
These are accessible only to the Super Admin who manages the network (that’s you) and will let you install themes and plugins and create and manage sites. I’ll take you through these in more detail later in this post.
The admin screens that each site admin can access are similar to a standard WordPress site, but a couple are missing: site admins can’t install themes or plugins but can only activate those that have been installed on the network.
But apart from that, the screens will be very familiar to anyone who has used WordPress.
How the Multisite Files Are Different
There are just two differences to the files and folders in a Multisite network: the wp-config.php file and the wp-uploads folder.
The wp-config.php file will have some extra lines added which activate Multisite and tell WordPress how it’s running. The wp-uploads folder will contain a subfolder for each site on the network, with the site’s numerical ID as its name. Files uploaded to each site are stored in that site’s folder, in the same structure as you would normally expect to see them in the wp-uploads folder in a standard WordPress installation.
But the good news is that WordPress manages the file structure for you, so you don’t need to worry about it!
How the Database is Different with Multisite
The final difference is one you really don’t have to worry about unless you’re into that sort of thing: the database tables. The database for a standard WordPress installation will have 11 database tables for storing your site’s content and settings. With a Multisite network, nine of these are duplicated for each site, meaning that if you’ve got a lot of sites, you’ll have a lot of tables. This keeps the content for each site separate.
Again this is something that goes on behind the scenes and which you should never need to worry about.
Uses for Multisite
Multisite has a lot of applications, but I like to think of them as coming under three categories:
A privately run network of sites or blogs for an individual or business
A network of client sites installed and administered by a developer or agency
A network which people can add their own sites to, either for free or by paying a subscription.
I have my own network of personal sites on my blog. I use this to create sites to demonstrate techniques I write about in my books and tutorials, and to try out new ideas. You might want to create a network to host your own personal sites if you have more than one, and with domain mapping plugins you can even use a different domain name for each site.
Businesses also use Multisite to host multiple sites which they administer and manage themselves: an example is BBC America, which uses Multisite to host its network of blogs.
I also manage a network of client sites for my agency, Compass Design. I moved all of my client sites to Multisite a year or so ago after years of keeping them all separate. It means that when I need to update WordPress (or a theme or plugin) I only have to do it once, and I have one place from which to manage all of my client sites. I use domain mapping so each client can have their own domain, and give them admin access for their own sites if they need it (which not all do). The benefit of this is that it means your site admins have more capabilities than an editor would on a standard site but can’t install themes and plugins which might break their site or your network.
There are also plenty of examples of Multisite networks which let people create their own site. The biggest, WordPress.com, hosts millions of sites and is free to use, with premium themes and plugins available at a cost.
Our own Edublogs enables schools and educators to create a blog, and powers million of sites using one Multisite Network. Users create a blog for free, with the option to move to a Pro account with extra features.
When Not to Use Multisite
Although Multisite is great (yes it is!) and has plenty of uses, it’s not always going to be the tool that you need. Here are some examples of when you don’t need Multisite:
You want to create a single site or blog and don’t plan to create any more in future.
You’re creating sites for multiple clients but each will be hosted separately, maybe with clients having their own hosting providers.
Each site you’re creating will need its own separate database (maybe for security reasons).
Each site will need its own IP address.
Site administrators will need to install their own themes or plugins.
You’ll need to move your sites to another server (that this can be done but is more involved than for a standard site, and can be avoided completely if all you need is separate domains).
You don’t have access to the files on your server for editing.
If one of the above applies to you, I would recommend sticking with a single site WordPress installation. If you do need a network but your hosting setup prevents you from doing so, I’d recommend switching providers!
Activating Multisite
Now that you know what Multisite is and how it can benefit you, it’s time to learn how to activate it. How you do this will depend on whether your site is a brand new one or an established one. It will also depend on whether you want to use subdomains or subdirectories for your network’s sites:
Using subdomains means that each site will have a url like http://site1.yournetwork.com. If you’re planning to let people create their own site, you’ll need to have wild card subdomains activated for your hosting.
Using subdirectories means that each site will have a url like http://yournetwork.com/site1. You can’t choose this option on an established site that you’re converting to a network as it may cause clashes with urls already created in your site.
Let’s start by activating Multisite in a brand new installation.
Activating Multisite on a Fresh WordPress Installation
Activating Multisite when you install WordPress involves a few extra steps. Firstly, you need to install WordPress and allowing a network.
Install WordPress in the normal way. Download WordPress and use the ‘famous 5 minute install’ to install it on your server or local machine.
Open your wp-config.php file which you’ll find in the folder where you installed WordPress. Find the line that reads:
Immediately above that line, create a new line that reads as follows:
Now save your wp-config.php file.
The next step is to visit the WordPress admin screens and install Multisite.
In the WordPress admin, go to Tools >Network Setup. You’ll be prompted to choose subdomains or subdirectories for your installation: choose the one that works for your network.
Edit the title of your network and email address of the network administrator when prompted, or leave them as they are.
Click the Install button.
The final step is to copy some code provided by WordPress into your wp-config.php and .htaccess files.
You will be taken to the Network Install screen:
Open each of your wp-config.php and .htaccess files and edit them in line with the text provided on the screen. If you can’t find .htaccess on your server, it may because hidden files aren’t visible: change the settings in your code editor if you’re using one to access your files.
Save both files.
WordPress Multisite will now be installed. You’ll need to log in again, and when you do so you’ll see the dashboard:
Now you can start adding sites, plugins, themes and more.
Activating Multisite on an Established WordPress Installation
If you’re converting your existing site to a Multisite network, you follow the same steps as above with one exception: you won’t be given the option to select subdomains or subdirectories. If your site has been in existence for more than a month, you’ll be forced to use subdomains.
Managing Your Network
Now your network is in place and running just one site, which is the man site for the network. This site is no different from the other sites which will be added to your network: it has the same admin screens and the same permissions.
Managing your network will consist of:
Creating and managing sites
Installing and activating themes
Installing and deactivating plugins
Installing updates
Let’s start by creating a site.
Creating a Site
You can create sites manually or you can install a plugin that lets users create their own. I’ll cover how you do this with a plugin later, but first, here’s how to create a site manually.
Go to the network admin screens by clicking on My Sites > Network Admin in the admin menu.
Go to Sites > Add New.
Type in the site address (i.e. the subdomain or subdirectory), the site title and the email address of the site administrator, as shown in the screenshot:
The new site will be created. If you’ve used your own email address for the site admin, you’ll be able to see it when you hover over the My Sites link in the admin menu. If you’re not the administrator, you can still see it from your network admin screens. Click Sites > All Sites to view all of your sites. Below you can see just a selection of the sites in the network I’ve set up on my own domain:
You can also create a new site from the front end of your main site, using a plugin. I’ll look at some plugins for Multisite shortly.
Installing and Activating Themes
Only the super administrator of a network can install themes and make them available for sites to use. You can do this in one of two ways: you can allow them for individual sites or you can network activate them. A theme can only be activated on a site if it’s been network enabled or enabled for that site.
Here’s how you install a theme and network enable it:
In the Network admin screens, go to Themes > Add New and install the theme in the same way as you would for a standard WordPress site.
On the ‘Installing Theme’ screen that appears, click the Network Enable link.
Alternatively, to network enable a theme you’ve already installed, click on Themes to go to the Themes screen, then click the Network Enable link below a theme.
You can also enable a theme just for one site. This can be useful if your network runs lots of sites each of which will need a different theme, for example if you’re hosting client sites. Enabling themes by site means that other themes won’t be available to sites which don’t have them enabled, so there’s no risk of site admins accidentally activating the wrong theme.
To do this, follow these steps:
In the Network admin, click on Sites to view all of your sites.
Hover over the name of the site you want to enable the theme for and click the Edit link that appears.
Click the Themes tab to view the themes settings screen for the site:
Under the theme you want to enable, click the Enable link.
Now when you go to the site administration screens for that site and click on Appearance > Themes, you’ll see the theme you’ve enabled included in the available themes for activation:
Installing and Activating Plugins
Plugins also have to be installed by the network administrator, but they work slightly differently with regard to the sites on the network. You can’t enable a plugin for an individual site: instead you can network activate it, so it runs on every site on the network, or you can just install it, so that individual sites can choose to activate it.
Network activating plugins is useful if you’ve written or downloaded a plugin to provide features which you want all of your sites to have, for example on my network of client sites I’ve installed the Snapshot plugin to ensure that all of the sites are backed up regularly. Here’s how to install and network activate a plugin:
In the network admin screens, got to Plugins > Add New and install the plugin as you would in a normal WordPress site.
In the Installing Plugin screen, click the Network Activate link.
That’s it! The plugin will now run on all the sites in your network and site admins won’t be able to disable it.
But what if you want to just activate the plugin on one site? That’s done by installing the plugin as a network admin and then activating the plugin if you have site admin privileges for the site.
In the network admin screens, got to Plugins > Add New and install the plugin as you would in a normal WordPress site.
In the Installing Plugin screen, click the Return to Plugin Installer link.
Visit the site admin screens for the site you want to activate the plugin for and click the Plugins link in the admin menu.
Under the plugin you want to activate, click the Activate link as you would in a normal WordPress site.
You’ll notice that in the Plugins screen for a site admin, there’s only the option to activate or deactivate plugins, not to delete or update them:
Managing Sites
There are other screens you can use to manage the sites on your network, accessible via the Sites screen in the network admin. These are:
Info
Users
Themes
Settings
The Info screen contains basic information on the site. This is where you would change the domain for the site if needed, or update its status.
The Users screen lists all of the users for this site, who will also be users on your network. You can use this screen to remove users from a site or to add a user to a site if they’ve already been added to your network (more of which shortly). You can also change user roles from here. Site admins can also add users from the Users section of their own admin as you would for a normal WordPress site: they can add users not already registered on the network as well.
The Settings screen gives you access to all of the settings for the site, some of which site admins have access to via the Settings section of their admin menu. This includes everything in the site’s options table in the database, including the site title, description, theme and more. I would advise against changing any settings you’re not familiar with.
Managing Your Network: Updates, Users and Settings
As well as managing the individual sites in your network, you’ll need to manage the network itself. This will include:
Updating WordPress
Updating themes and plugins
Managing users
Customizing the settings.
Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.
Updates
Updating themes, plugins and WordPress itself via the network admin screens is straightforward: you’ll see a notification if any of your code needs updating and you simply update it in the same way as you would for a normal site. Updating WordPress is a two step process: you need to install the update and then update the network of sites. This is just a case of clicking a couple of extra links which WordPress will guide you through.
Users
The Users screen works in the same way as for a standard WordPress site: it will list all of the users on your network and let you edit and delete them. This will include users that site admins have added to your site as well as users who’ve signed up for a site.
The one main difference is that the Users screen tells you which sites a user has access to. If you want to add a user to a site, you do so via the Users tab in the site settings.
Settings
You use the Network Settings screen to customise the way your network is used:
Settings you can customise are:
The title of your network
The network admin’s email address
Registration settings: whether users can register accounts and/or sites, whether site admins can add new users, and email domains and site names which are banned.
New site settings: the content of the welcome email for site admins and users and the first page, post and comment created on new sites.
Upload settings: file types permitted and maximum file size
Language settings: the default language
Menu settings: enable or disable the plugins menu item for site admins. If you disable this they won’t be able to activate or deactivate plugins.
Managing and Maintaining a Huge Network of Sites
The examples I gave above of huge, successful Multisite networks will store vast amounts of data and receive millions of visits across their network every day. Clearly this isn’t something your site can handle if it’s installed on a shared server with a cheap hosting plan, so as your network grows you’ll need to make changes to the way you manage your data and serve up content to accommodate the extra data and traffic.
To learn more about how this is done, see our post about how we scaled Edublogs to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of blogs (at the time of the post) and millions of users.
Plugins That Make Multisite Even Better
Multisite is great as it is, but if you want to get more for it you’ll probably need to install one or more plugins. A plugin will help you do things like allow site registration from the front end, map domains to the sites in your network, and monetise your network.
Here are some of the plugins that are the most invaluable, including some of our best Multisite plugins and some free ones that you can download from the WordPress plugin repository:
Our Domain Mapping plugin lets you give each site in your network its own domain name. It also lets you buy and sell domains to your site admins, which can help you monetize your network.
Backing up your network is essential: your site admins won’t thank you if you lose their data! In a recent post I rated Snapshot as the best backup plugin for WordPress, and for Multisite it wins hands-down. It lets you take regular backups of your entire network and restore them quickly and easily. Some other premium backup plugins don’t support Multisite, but this one does.
Pro Sites lets you convert your network into a profitable business by offering paid upgrades, advertising and more. It provides you with a front end interface people can use to create a site on your network, and lets you limit features for free sites, to encourage your users to upgrade.
If you want to make it easy for your site admins or users to raise support tickets or see the answers to frequently asked questions, the Support System plugin will help. With it you can add a page in your main site’s front end and in the admin screens where users can raise support tickets and ask questions, and you can manage and respond to those tickets.
This free plugin lets you map alternative domains to the sites in your network. Unlike our Domain Mapping plugin it doesn’t let you sell domains to make money from your network, but it’s a free alternative.
The User Switching plugin does exactly what it promises: it lets you as network admin switch user accounts so you can see what your users are experiencing when they’re logged in. It can be helpful for troubleshooting or making edits to sites if your users break something!
I hope I’ve convinced you that WordPress Multisite makes WordPress even more powerful. It lets you create more than one site with just the one WordPress installation, helping you to keep all of your own sites in one place or let others create their own sites which you can make money from.
Activating Multisite just takes a few extra steps once you’ve installed WordPress, and managing your network and creating sites in it isn’t complicated. As you’ve seen, the screens do look slightly different but won’t be unfamiliar for anyone with experience of managing a standard WordPress site.
How do you use WordPress Multisite? Have you recently switched from using single site to Multisite? Which plugins make Multisite even better for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
WordPress Multisite is a powerful solution for launching several websites off just one WordPress install.
While it’s relatively straightforward to set up, uninstalling it can be a challenge for the uninitiated.
In this Weekend WordPress Project, I’ll show you how to quickly uninstall Multisite and get your site back to running a single WordPress install.
Uninstalling Multisite
Removing Multisite involves undoing all of the work you did to install it in the first place. Let’s go through it step by step:
Backup Your Site
It’s always better to be safe than sorry. Check out our Snapshot plugin if you don’t already have your own method of backing up.
Edit wp-config File
Login to your WordPress site via FTP or cPanel, whichever method you prefer. If you’re using cPanel, go to File Manager to access your site’s files.
Open your wp-config.php file and delete the following code:
You will also need to edit the following line in your wp-config.php file and set it to “false”:
Edit .htaccess File
Next, you will need to edit your .htaccess file, which is in the root of your WordPress install. Replace the rules you added to create your Multisite install with the following new rules:
Drop Database Tables
Lastly, you will need to drop the following global tables in your database. phpMyAdmin is probably the easiest software to do this with if you use cPanel, though you can use whatever method you like:
wp_blogs
wp_blog_versions
wp_registration_log
wp_signups
wp_site
wp_sitemeta
The next time you log in to your site Multisite should be gone from your WordPress install.
Wouldn’t it be easier if there weren’t so many steps for installing and uninstalling Multisite? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
