Alternative to WordPress MultiSite

WordPress Multisite can appear appealing for a number of reasons, such as:

• Hosting sites for your customers
• Making it easier to administer multiple sites at once (ie: shared login)
• Simplifying website creation for your customers
• Storage optimization

However it’s important to keep in mind that it also comes with a number of serious drawbacks:

• Performance: because of the way images and other static files are referenced in the code, every request must hit PHP processing, which can dramatically slow down sites, particularly when there’s a bump in traffic to any one of the sites. Long term, this can result in the need to purchase more powerful hosting plans / more resources to keep the sites running smoothly.
• Separation / de-multiplexing: If there ever comes the time where you need to move just one of the sites in your multisite setup to its own separate hosting, this is a complicated (or costly) process because you either need to pay for a pro plugin to do it, or do it all manually and rebuild the design.
• Multiplexing and Troubleshooting Complexity: WP Multisite essentially integrates any number of websites into a single install of WordPress. This means that when a browser requests one of the sites, it needs to be directed to the right domain at the host (as with all sites), then directed to the correct website within that hosting plan not just for the page, but every single CSS, JS, HTML, XML, and image files as well. This means utilizing either custom web server configs, or PHP processing or both to make this happen which means the initial setup can be complex, and so too can be troubleshooting issues.

When should I use WordPress Multisite then?

Because of these drawbacks we believe there is only one use-case where Multisite should be considered: when simplfying website creation for your customers and utilizing a website builder with WP Multisite licensing considerations.

Essentially you’re building a Wix or GoDaddy Builder competitor using WordPress as the core, but also losing one of the key benefits of using WordPress: portability.

If you do this, you must stress to your clients that you’re using a proprietary website builder within WordPress that means any sites created with it can never be moved to another provider as-is (or you provide them with the migration-away service via pro plugin you license/own).

If you’re set on using Multisite, here’s how to configure WordPress Multisite with Websavers hosting.

How do I get the benefits of Multisite with standalone WordPress installs?

If you’re hosted with us on our Carbon hosting plan, you can install WordPress sites on your domain and as many subdomains of your domain as you’d like. Example: site1.<domain>, site2.<domain>.

If you’re hosted with us on our Titanium hosting plan, you can install WordPress sites on your primary domain and as many addon domains as you’d like. Example: <domain1.com>, <domain2.com>

Tip: With both hosting plans you *could* use subfolders as well (example: <domain.com>/site1, <domain.com>/site2), however we don’t recommend this as it can confuse what URLs are part of which site (ie: is this a page on the main site, or one of the sub-sites?) while also being sub-optimal and complex for caching plugins.

There’s three key benefits to Multisite that you might not realize you can get from standalone WordPress installs as well: easy switching between sites for administration, sharing users, standardizing plugins and themes.

How to easily switch between sites when administering them

With Multisite, once you’re logged into the ‘primary’ site’s WordPress admin, you can then switch between sites for easy administration.

With standalone WordPress installations, each one has its own admin login that’s totally separate from the others. But there are ways to make this easy to manage similar to Multisite!

1. You can use our 1-click web apps utility that’s provided free with all of our hosting plans. Simply login to Plesk, and choose 1-click web apps and each of your WordPress installs appear there in a list with a simple “Login” link to access their WordPress admins without entering the admin username and password.
2. 3rd party WordPress management tools like ManageWP and our fav open source equivalent MainWP will allow you to add WordPress sites, even across different hosting providers, to their management software. Using these utilities you’ll be able to login to each site admin with a single click and without their indivdual passwords, much like our 1-click web apps utility.

How to synchronize users between sites

The first item above covers easy administration of multiple WordPress sites, but what about if you want to have users, such as WooCommerce customers, login to multiple sites with the same username and password? This is particularly useful if you’re using subdomains of the same domain, like mywebsite.com and store.mywebsite.com with a separate WordPress install on each.

Enter: WP Remote Users Sync plugin!

This handy plugin must be installed on each site that you wish to sync users with, then once each site is configured to connect to the ‘main’ site, along with a myriad of detailed configuration options, your WordPress users and their state (login/out) can be shared across sites!

How to standardize WordPress configurations between sites

While you can’t automatically resync your plugin and theme set across sites after its initially been installed, those with reseller hosting or a VPS of their own can use our 1-click web apps utility to create a WordPress template that can then be used to install WordPress on any number of domains or subdomains!

• To set up a template you first have to have an actual WordPress install that has the plugins and themes you want to roll out to every site. If you don’t have that ready to go yet, simply begin by installing WordPress, then get customizing!
• Once customized, go to 1-click web apps in Plesk. The tab you default to should be “My Applications” – find your app in the list and click the menu button (3 lines) > Template
• Answer the questions it asks of you and click the “+ Template button” to create it

Now when you go to install WordPress the next time, you’ll have the option to choose your new template!

That’s it! With the handy tips in this guide, have we convinced you to use multiple standalone WordPress installs rather than Multisite? Let us know in the comments!