WCSF Video: Don’t Use WordPress Multisite

By Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)Video

[wpvideo LYqducp0 width=”800″]

Too many people see Multisite as a silver bullet that can do everything they need, only to find out they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, and now they have a site that is too big, too complicated, and too much of a hassle. Understanding what Multisite does out of the box, what it’s best at, and where it’s easily extendable will help you build the right site.

12 thoughts on “WCSF Video: Don’t Use WordPress Multisite”

  2. Mika,
    Awesome presentation, overwhelming for me but succeeded to learn to fear:
    I have to build an ecommerce niche site with 400 suppliers and each one offering 25 products (pages) with one shopping cart destination for all of them at the main site.
    I am the only one managing all the sites, suppliers won’t even know their username and password.
    I plan to build it as a multisite with 400 small child (not subdomain) sites in a shared hosting using Cloudfront for the product’s pictures.
    I would very very much appreciate your kind opinion whether I am in the right way or should I adopt a better way.

    Very many thanks,

    Ruben

    1. You heard me talk about my dream of a REAL Multisite Shopping cart?

      So… No. I wouldn’t do this in Multisite. CPTs, one for each store (yes, 400 CPTs), and one master shopping cart. After all, there’s no way to hook 400 sites to one cart DB today.

      Also if you do this on shared, you WILL cry.

  3. Mika,

    Thanks for your quick response.
    I respect your knowledge and experience with your warning.
    The problem is I’m crying now, unless you “allow” me to try.
    The stores are very small (10/20/50 pages each), pages are small
    as well ( 1 pic and 1-2 explanation lines).
    No one will ever touch the sites, but me.
    Instead of a shopping cart it could be a link to a secured payment
    processor (like Avantgate).
    Hosting is always scalable, besides not all the 400 are uploaded the
    same day, so when I feel it’s the right time (and have the $$), I transfer
    them to a dedicated or a VPS.
    With the expected budget I could hire an expert (you of course) to look
    after possible problems and solve them or better avoid them : ).

    This is all about money, it’s better to sell “you’ll have your own private site”
    than “you’ll have presence in a big site”.

    After this, is your answer still the same ?

    Thanks again,

    Ruben

    1. I’m not stopping you, but I’m not available for hire and I’m not going to do your work for you for free because I don’t have time, and there’s a limit to everyone’s generosity.

      You need to hire a specialist if this is what you want to do. You asked me what I would do. I told you. Good luck, man, you’re gonna need it, and I am sorry for that. But you clearly don’t understand that 400 child sites is something that demands a VPS because you’re running 400 WordPress sites. Don’t be short sighted. Don’t be stingy. You can get a VPS for around $50 a month. If that breaks your bank, you have some issues.

      Also you don’t have to hit enter at the end of every line. The internet has linewrapping for pretty much all comment systems, WordPress included.

  4. Oh Jeehhh Someone who thinks the same way!!! 😆

    I have maka a offer for a multisite 51 Multisites hoahhh, really to shiver!!
    here my text
    =======================
    II would recommend not to carry out the pages below Mult site, for the benefit of multisite is also the weakness of the multi-site! Because if the main site is not working then all pages will not work, I would recommend switching to the normal WordPress site. Easy for installation, you can create templates of WordPress site and then copy and apply it to a host. Similarly, I would suggest a CDN server that distributes all over the world and so is running the http command, depending on the region of the appropriate CDN server.
    ========================

    but they did not they would prefer multi-site, then they shall have it, I wish them much pleasure!

    —stooni

    3. Sweet monkey nuts…. Ow.

      Y’know, that’s actually a weird but solid use-case for Multisite. Everyone gets a blog (aka Oprah + JJJ), and it makes sense. I would use Multisite, but I’d also hire a permanent WP expert to be on retainer!

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