How to Set Up a WordPress Multisite

If you are using WordPress, you will know that it can be used for multiple purposes, such as creating a blog, creating an online store, but it can also be used to configure a multisite network to manage all your sites from a single account, it allows us to create a network of websites that run with a single central WordPress installation.

For example, we have an online newspaper, yourpaper.com, you can have all the sections in a multisite, sports, international, which in itself are your own places, with which you will have yourpaper.com/sports, within sports you can have tennis, football, basket…

Another example. You sell WordPress themes in your store, and you want to add the demos, but you don’t want to use subdomains, which you will have to manage independently. The solution is a multisite.

Before you start, if you still don’t know how to create a WorPress site you can read the post Create Your Website With WordPress.

Pros Of A WordPress Multisite Network

• As a network administrator, you can easily manage multiple sites from a single dashboard. The WordPress permissions and roles feature allows you to manage all of your sites as an administrator, while each individual site can have its own site administrators that cannot access the main network.
• Each website can have its own administrators. All site administrators will have the ability to individually manage only their own website.
• You do not need to install themes and plugins on each site separately, you just have to install it in the main basin, it will be activated for all sites.
• Since all themes and plugins are related, every time you update a theme or plugins, it will do so for all sites, saving you time.

Cons Of A WordPress Multisite Network

• If the network is affected for any reason, it will affect all your sites. Since all sites will work under a main network.
• If, for example, one of the sites exceeds the traffic, the other sites will be affected.
• In the event that the main network is attacked by hackers, the rest of the sites will also be affected.
• There may be some plugins that are not prepared for a multisite and may not work properly.
• Some web hosting companies do not support multisite WordPress networks.

Multisite In wp-config.php

The first is to activate the multisite function in the wp-config.php file.

• Connect via FTP to your site from a client such as FileZilla, or through the cPanel.
• Open the file wp-config.php, which is is located in the main directory of your WordPress, and add the line
  define(‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true);
  below the line:
  /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
• Save the file.

We are not done yet. Next, you must log in to your WordPress site and configure your network.

• If you have your site open, refresh the page and log in to your website.
• Now we go to the dashboard menu, and go down to Tools → Network Setup (before we must deactivate all plugins). Click install.

• Follow the instructions.

Network Settings

We explain above the new network administrator tabs:

• Dashboard: Here you can add new users and new sites to your network.
• Sites: On this tab, you can see all sites of your network. From here you can delete, deactivate, edit or go to the dashboard of each site.
• Users: Here you can administer the users of your network. You can assign the super admin user role. The super admin has access to all sites and can make changes within the whole network.
• Themes: Here you can install and uninstall themes and activate or deactivate them for the whole network.
• Plugins: Here you can find all installed plugins. You can find ,add new plugins or delete them, activate or deactivate them for the whole network.
• Settings: On this tab you can find and edit the basic settings for your site (the network name and the admin, email address, user registrations), …

Add A New Website

In a WordPress multisite you can add as many websites as you want at any time. To add a new site, follow the steps below:

• Go to My Sites → Network Admin → Sites and click Add New.
• Enter the website address. The domain is already given, we just add the sub diretory.

Adding Themes and Plugins To Your Multisite Network

To add themes, go to My Sites → Network Admin → Themes Page. Here we have all the themes installed, in addition to being able to add more.

If we activate a plugin in the administrator, it will be activated for all sites, in each site we can deactivate it.

Multisite In A New Installation Througt cPanel

We can create a multisite during the installation of WordPress through the cPanel, although not all the hosts have this option, and others are not prepared and can make your multisite not work properly.

All we have to do is check the multisite option of our installation. Sometimes this option is in Advanced Options.

References:
themeisle.com
isitwp.com
pagely.com
multilingualpress.org
wpbeginner.com