WordPress Multisite For Complex Projects [WordCamp London 2018]

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one hundred and seventeen million
This is how many websites are running on the single instance of WordPress right now. Imagine our regular WordPress Dashboard but having this number of websites inside it that you can reach with just one click. These are the actual numbers of the website we all know — wordpress.com

It’s got one hundred and seventeen million sites in the network, one hundred and thirty six million users and over one billion visits per month
https://www.similarweb.com/website/wordpress.com

And the thing that makes it possible is called WordPress Multisite.

My name is Sabrina Zeidan. I’m from Kyiv, Ukraine. I am WordPress Multisite Consultant. I help development teams to build networks of websites using WordPress Multisite functionality.
And today I want to share some awesome things that this system makes possible.
Today we’ll see:
what is WP MU
why you would love to use it for your next big project
and we’ll see real life examples of it’s efficient usage
So hopefully next time when you have a complex project in front of you, you would say “Hey! I know the most efficient tool to build it!”
So, let’s start with a quick introduction. What WordPress Multisite is?

It is the ability to create a network of sites running on the single instance of WordPress.
Basically, you’ve got a bunch of sites and they all share a codebase and database, the same WordPress install. How it may look like?

It may have subdirectory structure.

You can use subdomain structure in WordPress Multisite Network. So it will look like...

And the coolest thing is that you can even use Top Level Domains in your Multisite Network. Site1.com, totally different site2.com. You have different sites that totally look like they are not related but they are still on the same WordPress install.

In all these cases WordPress Network works the same. You have one single war room (command centre) where the things are toasted and from where you manage the whole bunch of sites: three, ten, hundred, thousands of websites… How big the number might grow?

The answer to this question is exactly the first reason to love WordPress Multisite.

Scalability to infinity and beyond.
There is no limits for the number of websites on software side.
You've already seen the numbers of the largest WordPress network WordPress.com.

https://wordpress.com/ one hundred and seventeen million sites in the network 117 000 000
https://edublogs.org/ 3 million websites 3 000 000
My personal best for now — 116 one hundred sixteen websites
But the opposite side of such exciting opportunities is responsibility. There is extra responsibility for network administrator and here we come to the reason to love WordPress Multisite #2.

While each site of the network may have its own admin, editors, authors, subscribers or any other custom users roles (just like in regular WordPress install), in the WordPress Multisite there is a SuperAdmin role to rule over the whole network.
He has unlimited access and all capabilities across the network. He can easily access any site in the network from the Network Dashboard instead of log in the Dashboard of each site individually.
He has to take care about just one single database and codebase which makes it pretty easy to maintain even large networks. He has to update WordPress core just once, update plugins and themes one single time. He installs plugins, and can activate or deactivate them for the whole network or just for the one particular site if he needs.
So, the SuperAdmin role gives you a full control over WordPress Multisite Network. And the local Administrator of each site inside network has regular admin capabilities the same as in the single WordPress install.
The organization system is simple and logical. Each admin of the subsite can do whatever he wants on his site but inside the boundaries set by SuperAdmin. And this is exactly the third reason to love WordPress Multisite.

Every site inside WordPress Multisite network exists completely independently from others. It may have its own plugins, theme, users, media, posts everything apart from another sites in the network.
But the choice of plugins and themes is predefined by Superadmin only. Only Superadmin has capability to install plugins and themes, but administrator of each site can decide whether to activate it on his site or not.

This federated-like kind of architecture is the heart and soul of the WordPress Multisite. It makes it possible to Superadmin to keep everything under control, but still gives the vast opportunities for the customization of each individual site inside network. And makes the system very flexible.

The most simple example: you can set the default language across whole network, but at the same time one particular site may have another default language.

The reason to love WordPress Multisite number 4 is the opportunity to make aggregated content.
You can have
products from site B displayed in the widget on site C
news from site C shown in the footer on site D
main navigation menu of site C displayed on site D
all tags across network shown on the main site
Or show the combined list of the most popular posts from the all network
Basically, you can get any information from any site in any place of your network.

WordPress Multisite follows the IKEA Kitchen principle and it is the reason to love it #5.
You can easily add new websites to the network (even not from scratch, but already existing ones). And then if you need you can move any site out of the network to the single install.

And the bonus! An extra reason to love WordPress Multisite. We can create not just a Network of sites running on single instance of WordPress but we can go further and create Network of Networks. The system with complex hierarchy but the same easy management.
https://ru.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-multi-network/

You may say “Well, fine! But how can I make use of all these?”
I would like to show you five awesome ways to use WordPress Multisite.

The first thing that comes to mind when you are thinking about WordPress Network is Blog Network, of course.
And this is the most common use of WordPress Multisite. The user signs up on the main site, creates his own blog and starts filling it with his thoughts. Multisite feature is the ideal fit for media. The New York Times, BBC America, Reuters are already using it.

The New York Times Blogs https://afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/
Reuters Blogs http://blogs.reuters.com/us/
Harvard Blogs http://blogs.harvard.edu/
Spotted By Locals travelblogs http://www.spottedbylocals.com/
University of British Columbia Blogs http://blogs.ubc.ca/

There are all kinds of examples now of SaaS businesses being built on top of WordPress Multisite. We've already seen the great (in all meanings) example of WordPress.com
It lets users create their own blogs blogname.wordpress.com for free. But charges for additional features (for example, the ability to create your blog using your tld name and so on)
This is how different hosting companies, email marketing companies, planners and many others SaaS businesses make use of WordPress Multisite.

Multisite is very advantageous when you need a high degree of independence for local subsites but you still want them to share some common resources.
That's why it's widely used by government organizations with their various wings and departments.
For example, Pension fund of Ukraine, my native country, which is the main pension plan in Ukraine.
http://pfu2017.ww3.com.ua/

There are 24 regions in Ukraine and each has its own division of Pension fund.
For many years these regional websites were absolutely separated. They appeared in different time, were created by different people, and administered by others.
Needless to say that they all had different domain names, design, content, architecture, content management systems, staff.
In other words, it was a total mess.

The client wanted all websites of regional departments to work under one umbrella.
So that it won’t be the collection of 24 separate amateurish websites anymore, but modern professional looking government portal.
There should be unified design for all departments, shared content across all sites, but still the ability for every local site to have it’s own content too.The main administrator should have all control over the network, while local admins should still be able to add local news and information to their sites.

So, naturally WordPress Multisite has been chosen as a solution.

The team has done the great work on this project.
We created a Multisite Network and 24 subsites for each regional department
They all have got the same theme
All the content from old regional websites has been moved to the new
The navigation menu has very interesting structure. It looks exactly the same across the whole network. But on the subsites some items leads to the local categories (for example, News, as they are local) and some brings user to the main site (for example, Services, as they are the same in all regions).
The Advanced Custom Fields were used to organize the information in the Network and we managed to set synchronization across network. So when the specific information on the main site changes it’s updated automatically across all subsites too.

Each subsite homepage has got the map of Ukraine divided into regions with all departments listed. The user can see the number of people registered, communities, local contacts and of course the link to the regional subsite.
As this is the Pension fund website the users mostly are older persons that may have some troubles with navigation. So we have set a tiny popup for users. When the user navigates the main site from regional department the reminder is shown to him from where he has just arrived, so he can easily navigate back to his local website in case he needs to.

Wordpress Multisite proved to be the ideal fit for the client requirements.

The team has done a great work to make everything works smoothly and now Pension fund of Ukraine has got modern, efficient, easy to manage system for all the departments. I think this is the great example of government caring about the people and I’m proud of being able to do my bit.

But, not only government organisations benefit from using WordPress Multisite. But also any other organisation that has a hierarchical setup. Just to list few, it may be:
Universities Where faculty and students can create their own sites. This is the screenshot of Washington State University, which is administered by known WordPress Multisite Expert, Jeremey Felt.
FranchisesThe main site for the parent company and subsites for the franchisee
Restaurants, coffee shops, bars Often have several locations within a city, the country, or across the globe. Each location might have similar content and branding, but need to communicate differently in certain areas, such as menu items, location, a local language, contact phone number and more.

WordPress Multisite can also help you to build a network of multilingual sites.
A separate site is created for each language and they all are forming the network. It makes the administration much easier.
Again, it may be subdirectory setup. This is a fairly common method. The famous cognac brand Courvoisier [kuʁvwazje] multilingual website is built with WordPress Multisite this wayhttps://www.courvoisier.com/fr
Or subdomain https://domain.com/ https://es.domain.com/ https://de.domain.com/
Or even TLDs https://domain.com/ https://domain.es/ https://domain.de/This method can be great for targeting specific countries as each subsite will get ranked in the local Google search in the local language, will have its own domain authority

By the way, you can also connect websites’ content between each other, so that the post from english version of site will be linked to spanish one and so on.
You also may want to redirect users in the front-end depending on the language set in their browsers.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/multilingual-press
http://wordpress.org/plugins/multisite-language-switcher

Don’t worry if I haven’t named some specific example you were thinking about. This is not meant to be all-inclusive, but it is intended to get you the basic idea of what kind of project you can built with WordPress Multisite.

And now. I have a question for you guys, a little riddle. The person who is the first to give the correct answer will get a special present from me.
So, here is the question:
What website that everyone in this room has visited is built with WordPress Multisite?

How it feels to work in Multisite environment for non-tech staff?
I’ve got just one slide for this...

Comfort of our usual Admin panel
consistency
network admin screenshot?

WordPress includes the ability to create a network of sites by using the multisite feature.

This article contains instructions for creating a multisite network.
A multisite network can be very similar to your own personal version of WordPress.com. End users of your network can create their own sites on demand, just like end users of WordPress.com can create blogs on demand. If you do not have any need to allow end users to create their own sites on demand, you can create a multisite network in which only you, the administrator, can add new sites.
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https://2018.london.wordcamp.org/
Enjoy the finest Ukrainian chocolate brought from Kyiv for you!
Now it’s my turn to answer your questions. You are welcome!