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Managing Multisite: Lessons from a Large Network
This document discusses lessons learned from managing a large WordPress multisite network with over 8,500 sites and 77,000 users. Key points include how to setup and install multisite quickly, pros and cons to consider, when multisite is a good fit, and challenges of supporting a very large network at a university including infrastructure, selecting plugins and themes, ongoing security, and tools used for monitoring, debugging and version control. Managing a large multisite installation requires keeping things simple and scalable as well as thinking long term about how design decisions will impact the network over time.
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Managing Multisite: Lessons from a Large Network
- 1. Managing Multisite Lessonsfrom a Large Network WordCamp Raleigh November 9, 2014 William Earnhardt - @earnjam
- 2. Single Site vsMultisite Single Site Multisite One WordPress Install ✓ ✓ One Database ✓ ✓ Supports Themes ✓ ✓ Supports Plugins ✓ ✓ Number of Websites 1 Unlimited* *Only limited by system resources
- 3. The 7 MinuteInstall Step 1: Do the famous “5 Minute Install” Step 2: Add this to wp-config.php Step 3: Go to Tools > Network Setup and follow instructions.
- 4. Pros & Consof Multisite Pros: • Updates • Reusability of code • Shared Database • Security • Messaging • Single Sign-On Cons: • Updates • Reusability of code • Shared Database • Security • Single Point of Failure
- 5. Should You UseMultisite? Absolutely • A group of related sites • Need to allow users to create new sites Probably Not • Unrelated client sites
- 6. WordPress at Carolina Web.unc.edu Self service web publishing for Carolina faculty, staff, and students. Sites.unc.edu Enterprise web platform for divisions, departments, schools, and more.
- 7. What Kind ofSites? • www.unc.edu • Departments • Divisions • Schools • Campus Units • Centers • Institutes • Research Labs • Programs • Collaborations • Student Organizations • Greek Community • Instructional Resources • Services • Faculty CVs • Portfolios And Much, Much More!
- 8. How big is“big”? 8,500 Sites 77,000 Users
- 9. How big is“big”? 243 Themes 140 Plugins
- 10. Infrastructure Our Setup: Varnish • Bypassed for logged in users • Cache purging handled via custom plugin 3 Apache Webservers NFS mounted shared file system • WordPress Core, themes, plugins, uploads, etc 2 MySQL servers • Replication/Hot spare • Full DB backups daily with point-in-time recovery available from binary logs
- 11. Infrastructure Ongoing Challenges/Lessons: Varnish • Cache invalidation is hard NFS • A single file system is simple, but not as fast Apache • You should probably just should use NGINX Database • Our databases are huge • Explore using HyperDB, or purge unused sites/tables/rows
- 12. Plugins & Themes “I’ll just use this plugin” http://devpractic.es/post/98877425141/ill-just-use-this-plugin
- 13. Selecting Themes &Plugins Licensing • GPLv2 or compatible? • Per Domain? Updates & Notifications • Wordpress.org vs External Repositories • Notifications only when activated Things to Watch Out For • SHOW TABLES LIKE • switch_to_blog() • get_plugins() • eval() WordPress.com VIP standards • http://vip.wordpress.com/documentation/code-review-what-we-look-for/
- 14. Selecting Themes &Plugins Ongoing Challenges/Lessons: Size of the codebase • Keep it simple • Only add what you truly need Deprecate old plugins and themes • Over 2 years since last update? Find a replacement Be picky about your plugins and themes • Thoroughly review the code • Is it in active development? • How is the support?
- 15. Security Single Site= Multisite No FTP Thoroughly Review Themes & Plugins Super Admins • Limit who/how many • Set them in code with an MU Plugin Update, Update, Update!
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- 17. Tools! Splunk •Insight into your logs • Reporting, Alerts, etc. • We use for PHP, Apache & ModSecurity • Free version lets you index up to 500MB of data per day
- 18. Tools! AppDynamics •Service monitoring • Average response times • Full call stack • Free version stores data for last 24 hours
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- 21. Tools! Query Monitor • Built by John Blackbourn, current WP 4.1 development lead • Deep insight into each page load Multisite Specific Plugins • Multisite Plugin Manager • Multisite Privacy Plugin • WordPress MU Domain Mapping • Network Manager Tools
- 22. Tools! Version Control • Git - Stash (Atlassian) • Full infrastructure builds of wp-content directory • Custom & 3rd party Themes/Plugins handled via submodules Local Development with Vagrant • Customized version of VVV Apache • Builds out 3 multisite environments PHPStorm • PHP Storm 8 has full WordPress support • Xdebug • Database Connections • Version Control
- 23. Takeaways Keep itsimple! • Use as few themes/plugins as you truly need • For open network, find add-ons that get your users 90% there Think long term • Each decision you make will affect a lot of sites/users down the road • The longer something is in place, the harder it is to change
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