Exploring WordPress Multisite

Exploring WordPress Multisite
@LisaSabinWilson | WordCamp Milwaukee 2012

About Your Presenter:
Lisa Sabin-Wilson
✤ Wisconsin (Go Pack!)
Lisa Sabin-Wilson
Author of books.
✤ WordPress user since 2003 Designer of sites.
Lover of WordPress.
✤ Author since 2006
http://lisasabin-wilson.com
@LisaSabinWilson
✤ Twitter: @LisaSabinWilson
Thanks for coming!

WordPress Books

✤ WordPress For Dummies

✤ WordPress All In One

✤ WordPress Web Design For
Dummies


Exploring WordPress Multisite
Run multiple sites with ONE installation of WordPress


Q&A
Please hold questions until the end - there will be time!


The Who, What & Why of
WordPress Multisite

What Is WordPress Multisite??

✤ Multi Site is what allows multiple WordPress web sites to be
powered off a single install.

✤ Your WordPress site is already Multisite capable out of the box, it just
needs to be activated with a single line of code added to the wp-
config.php ﬁle.

✤ WordPress.com is the largest and most prominent example of
Multisite at work. WordPress.com hosts over 400K blogs in their
network


Why Use Multisite?

✤ Run multiple sites with one installation of WordPress.

✤ Saves time by upgrading multiple sites with one action.

✤ Install plugins and themes only once for multiple sites.

✤ Allow people to run a blog in your network.


Who Uses
Multisite??
Developers / Programmers
(a.k.a.: Geeks & Nerds)

Generally speaking - they don’t really *use*
Multisite - mostly they dive into Multisite in
order to tear it apart, break it and put it back
together again so they know how it works.

Who Uses
Multisite??
Small Business Owners

Some business models require multiple sites
under one roof. One such model is the
WordPress Theme Shop - many theme shop
owners use Multisite to provide demos of
their themes.

Who Uses
Multisite??
The Owner of Multiple Sites

People who own and operate more than one
or two web sites powered by WordPress will
sometimes utilize the Multisite feature to
make their life easier (more about that later!)

Who Uses
Multisite??
Community Managers

People who host and manage online
communities. In the past, this was limited to
discussion forums and maybe one blog. Now
they host multiple blogs from multiple users,
forums, member proﬁles and more.

Multisite
Showcase
WordPress.com
http://wordpress.com

The largest example of Multisite at work.
WordPress.com hosts over 400K blogs in their
network

Multisite
Showcase
Teach For Us
http://teachforus.org

Teach For Us is a successful example of using
WordPress in native multi-site mode. The
well-designed site supports more than 800
blogs.

Multisite
Showcase
NYTimes Blogs
http://nytimes.com/interactive/blogs

The more than 60 blogs at The New York
Times cover everything imaginable, ranging
from arts to economics.

Multisite
Showcase
CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
http://journalism.cuny.edu

CUNY utilizes Multisite to spotlight student
work from such areas as news, video, tech,
television and more.

Exploring WordPress Multisite:
Multisite Preparation

Before You Dive Into Multisite
Consider what you’re getting yourself into

Running a Blog
Network
✤ Respect user privacy.

✤ Increased responsibilities for the
support needs of your
community.

✤ Manage spam and splogs.

✤ Keep the server running
smoothly.

✤ Provide your users with the
features they want....and features
that keep them coming back!

Managing
Multiple Sites
✤ It’s not impossible to go back to
single user WordPress
installations to manage your web
sites - - but it ain’t easy either!

✤ Learning curve ahead - prepare
yourself to re-learn a few of the
standard WordPress tasks that
you have become used to.

✤ Once a choice has been made on
the URL structure (subdomain or
subdirectory) - it is not easy to
switch it. Thing this one through.

Multisite
Hosting
Environment

How are you planning to use
Multisite? A full blog network?
A business venture? Managing
just a few small sites?

Multisite
Hosting
Environment
Web Hosting is an investment.

If it is FAST and GOOD - it is not
CHEAP.

If it is FAST and CHEAP - it is not
GOOD.

If it is GOOD and CHEAP - it is not
FAST.

Multisite
Hosting
Environment
Shared Server:
Multiple web sites hosted on a
single server - sharing resources
like CPU, Bandwidth, Memory
and Space.

Dedicated Server:
One single web site hosted on
one server. Does not share
resources with other sites.

Multisite
Hosting
Environment

Shared Server:
Most economical.

Dedicated Server:
Most expensive.

Multisite
Hosting
Environment

WordPress Multisite can be run
on either a shared or dedicated
hosting environment.

Give strong consideration to the
type of network you are running
and if you can afford to share
server resources.

Multisite
Hosting
Environment
Community networks, in
particular, are resource intensive.
When you invite users to utilize
features on your site such as
publishing, uploading media and
participating in community - you
are doubling/tripling your
resource use.

As your community grows, so do
your bandwidth, space and
resource needs on your server.

Multisite
Hosting
Environment
Control spam and splogs.

Have a plan in place to combat
spam and splog signups on your
community. Spiders and bots can
- and WILL - hit your site hard if
you do not have controls in place.

Spam and Splog problems can
really eat up CPU’s on a server.

WordPress Multisite Requirements

✤ Requires the basic WordPress installation on your hosting server:

✤ PHP version 5.2.5 or greater

✤ MySQL version 5.0 or greater

✤ Apache mod_rewrite (for pretty permalinks)


WordPress Multisite Requirements

✤ Make sure your hosting provider supports:

✤ Apache mod_rewrite (for pretty permalinks)

✤ Wildcard DNS
This allows you to use the subdomain feature for Multisite. Wildcard
domains allow you to use any word for the subdomain (that’s why its
called “Wildcard”).


WordPress Multisite Preparation
Subdomain or Subdirectory??

✤ The WordPress Multisite feature gives you two different ways to run a
network of sites on your domain. You can use the subdomain option or the
subdirectory option. The most popular option (and recommended
structure) sets up subdomains for the sites created in your network.

✤

SUBDOMAIN SUBDIRECTORY
Main Site: Main Site:
http://domain.com http://domain.com

http://site1.domain.com http://domain.com/site1

Subdomain or Subdirectory??

The decision to conﬁgure your Multisite environment with a subdomain or
subdirectory URL structure is up to you - but here are a few things to consider:

✤ Subdomains require the Wildcard DNS.

✤ Subdomains are seen as separate URLS in search engines, thus are given
separate results.

✤ Subdirectories are seen as ‘belonging’ to the main domain, they give more
authority to the main domain.

✤ Domain mapping? It doesn’t matter which URL conﬁguration you use.


Wildcard DNS

WILDCARD DNS CONFIGURATION

Easy way out Ask your web host to do it for you.

Less easy Add a subdomain to your account:
(but still easy) *.yourdomain.com
Edit the httpd.conf ﬁle on your Apache
Not easy
server

Wildcard DNS :: Ask Your Host

Asking your web host to conﬁgure a Wildcard DNS for your hosting account

Dear web host:

I am installing WordPress Multisite on my hosting account and
need to have a Wildcard DNS added for the following domain:
mydomain.com.

Please let me know if you can do this for me - or provide me
with the steps I need to take.

Thank you -

Me.

Wildcard DNS :: CPanel

Add a subdomain to your hosting account: *.yourdomain.com

Wildcard DNS :: WHM (Web Host Manager)

Login to WHM
Click icon for DNS Functions
Click icon for Edit DNS Zone
Select the domain you’d like to edit

Under Add New Entries Below this Line, ﬁll in the ﬁelds so that they look like:

* 14400 IN A 1.2.3.4

where 1.2.3.4 is the IP of the account


Wildcard DNS :: WHM (Web Host Manager)

Edit the DNS Zone for your domain via WHM:

Wildcard DNS :: httpd.conf

Edit the httpd.conf file on your Apache Web Server
(if you have access and know what you are doing!)

Log in as root and open the httpd.conf file (usually this file is located in /etc/
httpd/conf) with a text editor such as vim or nano.

Then find the VirtualHost entry for the website.

.....



A VirtualHost entry will look something like this:

<VirtualHost 67.15.245.5>
ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /home/yourdoma/public_html/you
ServerName yourdomain.com
User yourdoma
Group yourdoma
BytesLog /usr/local/apache/domlogs/yourdomain.com-bytes_log
CustomLog /usr/local/apache/domlogs/yourdomain.com combined
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/yourdoma/public_html/you/cgi-bin/
</VirtualHost>
.....


Change this line:

ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com

to this:

ServerAlias *.yourdomain.com

Save your changes. Restart Apache.


Exploring WordPress Multisite:
Enabling & Configuring Multisite

Activating Multisite
Gather the right tools

✤ What you will need:

✤ A text based editor like Notepad (PC) or Textmate (Mac)

✤ Access to your web server via FTP


wp-config.php

✤ Connect to your web server via FTP

✤ Locate and download: wp-config.php
(located in the root directory of your WordPress install)

✤ Open wp-config.php in your text editor of choice

✤ Find this line:
define(‘DB_COLLATE’);

✤ Add this line on the next line:
define ('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true ) ;


wp-config.php

wp-config.php

✤ Save your edited version of wp-config.php

✤ Upload it to your server via FTP, replacing the original one.


Network Setup

✤ Note the new menu item in your WordPress Dashboard: Tools --> Network
Setup

✤ Click the Network Setup link to load the Create a Network of WordPress Sites
page in your Dashboard

✤ Screenshot.


Network Setup

The ﬁnal steps for Network Setup completion requires you to
edit ﬁles on your web server - so have that Text Editor handy!


blogs.dir

✤ Create a directory on your Web server called blogs.dir

Your WordPress installation directory contains a folder labeled /wp-
content/. In that folder, you create a new directory called blogs.dir. The
entire path should look something like this: /public_html/wp-
content/blogs.dir.

This is the directory that stores all uploaded media (photos, videos, audio,
and other media) within the network sites on your domain.


wp-config.php

✤ Add the Network related configuration lines to the wp-config.php

WordPress gives you up to seven lines of configuration rules that need to
be added to the wp-config.php file:

define('multisite', true);
define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false );
$base = '/ ';
define( 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'localhost' );
define( 'PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' );
define( 'SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
define( 'BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );


.htaccess

✤ Add the Network related lines to the .htaccess:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
# uploaded files
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$2 [L]
# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ $1wp-admin/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $1 [L]
RewriteRule ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(.*.php)$ $1 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]


Multisite Activation
Live demo


Exploring the Multisite Database


Single User WordPress Database
11 tables

Multisite Database
6 new core tables added

*" wp_blogs: contains one record per site and is used for site lookup.
*" wp_blog_versions: used internally for upgrades.
*" wp_registration_log: information on sites created when a user signs up
*" wp_signups: contains information on users who signed up for the network.
*" wp_site: This database table contains one record per WordPress network.
*" wp_sitemeta: This database table contains network settings.


Multisite Database
Site tables

Each site in the network has it’s own grouping of tables in the database by site ID.

wp_2_options
wp_2_posts
wp_2_postmeta

The main site populates the original database tables and is not designated by ID
in the database schema.


Exploring the Multisite Fileserver


/wp-content/blogs.dir

Uploaded ﬁles (media, images, etc) are saved in a folder that
corresponds to the SITE ID:

/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/


WordPress
Multisite
Workshop
Q&A

Lisa Sabin-Wilson
Author of books.
Designer of sites.
Lover of WordPress.

http://lisasabin-wilson.com
@LisaSabinWilson

Exploring WordPress Multisite

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