Tag: multisite

For the longest time, if someone wanted to have example.com, foo.example.com and example.com/bar for their Network on Multisite, I’d tell them to use a Multinetwork Plugin like Networks+ (which you can buy from e-Books by Ron and Andrea) or WP Multi Network (free from JJJ).

But sometimes you don’t need multiple networks and the multiple admin sections. Sometimes you just want to have options. Thanks to the work that started with the roadmap you can have your cake and eat it too.

If you’ll recall, I detailed how you can map a domain without a plugin on Multisite these days. Guess what? You can also do this with subfolders and subdomains.

I did this with a subdomain install, since it made more sense to go that way.

WordPress is installed at multisite.dev and I have subsites of foo.multisite.dev and bar.multisite.dev

I then made a new site called baz.multisite.dev:

Then I edited that from this:

To this:

Be careful here! If you don’t put the trailing slash on the folder name, this will not work. And does this work? Yes it does. Of course there is the small issue of how this looks on my list of domains:

I have two sites as ‘multisite.dev’ and I have two ‘foo’ sites (because you can also make foo.multisite.dev/zot if you want to). The problem is that the Sites page in the Network Admin has a check:

$blogname_columns = ( is_subdomain_install() ) ? __( 'Domain' ) : __( 'Path' );

This means the ‘domain’ of foo.multisite.dev/zot and foo.multisite.dev are (correctly) foo. I couldn’t see how to filter, so I made a quick MU Plugin:

class Add_Blog_Blogname {
	
	public function __construct() {
        add_filter( 'wpmu_blogs_columns', array( $this, 'blogname' ) );
        add_action('manage_sites_custom_column',  array( $this, 'blogname_columns' ) , 10, 3);
        add_action('manage_blogs_custom_column', array( $this, 'blogname_columns' ) , 10, 3);
    }

	function blogname_columns($column, $blog_id) {
	        global $wpdb;
	        
	        $blog_details = get_blog_details($blog_id);
	        
	        if ( $column == 'my_blogname' ) {
	                echo $blog_details->blogname;
	        }
	        return $value;
	}
	
	// Add in a column header
	function blogname($columns) {
	    $columns['my_blogname'] = __('True BlogName');
	    return $columns;
	}
}

new Add_Blog_Blogname();

This tosses the True Blog Name to the end of the sites list. It’s not perfect, but it gets the job done.

Sometimes when you’re building a network, you don’t want all your sites to be available just yet. While you can install a ‘Coming Soon’ plugin, there are also built in ways to handle this.

First you’ll want to take advantage of two of the Network’s least loved features: Deactivate and Archive. When you go to the Sites page on the Network Admin and hover over the items, you have new options appear:

Should you click on Deactivate, you’ll be asked to confirm and then you get this:

Don’t panic!!

I know it says Deleted. It’s not. A deleted site is 100% deleted, the DB tables dropped and the images nuked. So while it ‘says’ deleted, it’s not. If you press Archive it’s a little more realistic:

What’s the difference? In both cases, this is what a non-logged in user sees:

And in both cases, you can’t log in, because this is what you see for wp-admin and wp-login.php.

It’s weird, but it pretty much ‘archived’ the sites. You can, as a Super Admin, see it, but you can’t even change user roles from the network dashboard. (I spent about an hour trying to debug why I, as a Super Admin, couldn’t get to the dashboard at all, and it turned out I needed to flush my cache, so remember folks, caching is wonderful until you shoot your foot.) Still this presents a predicament.

Frankly, I don’t want people to know a site doesn’t exist. That can be easily done with a filter and a redirect:

// Archived sites only I can see
function helf_redirect_hidden_sites() {

	// Super Admins always get in
	if ( is_super_admin() || current_user_can( 'manage_options' ) ) {
		return true;
	} else {
		// Defines
		if ( defined( 'NOBLOGREDIRECT' ) ) {
			$goto = NOBLOGREDIRECT;
		} else {
			$goto = network_site_url();
		}

		$blog = get_blog_details();

		if( '1' == $blog->deleted || '2' == $blog->deleted || '1' == $blog->archived || '1' == $blog->spam ) {
			wp_redirect( $goto );
	        die();
		}
	}
}
add_filter('ms_site_check','helf_redirect_hidden_sites');

I wanted to allow my site admins and my super admin to view it, but if you don’t, edit if ( is_super_admin() || current_user_can( 'manage_options' ) ) to only allow what you want. And because I’m using a subdomain site, this makes it look like an archived/deleted site is just another non-existent site, by redirecting to NOBLOGREDIRECT.

But this doesn’t work around the problem that my whole wp-admin is blocked off to non logged in users. I mean, how can I log in? The only workaround is that if the site is a subdomain (test.halfelf.org) or a subfolder (halfelf.org/test), then I can log in at halfelf.org/wp-admin and then visit over. If this was a mapped domain, I’d be in trouble. So it’s clearly not a perfect solution for everyone.

By the way, you can customize the various messages for suspended or deleted sites by creating the following files in wp-content:

blog-suspended.php
blog-deleted.php
blog-inactive.php

So if you just want it to be pretty, that’s easy.