Word-camp London 2018
This is the transcript unpolished from YouTube. Please excuse grammatical errors.
117 million websites are running right now on the single instance of WordPress imagine our regular dashboard but having these number of websites inside it that you can reach with just one click this is the actual numbers this is the actual numbers of the website this we all know wordpress.com it has 117 million websites in in this network 136 million users in it and over 1 billion visits per month and the teen that makes it happen that makes it possible this cultural wordpress multi-site and today I want to share with you some awesome things that the this system makes possible you already know that my name is Sabrina Zidane I am WordPress multi-site consultant I hope development teams to build networks of websites using WordPress multi-site functionality and today we’ll see what is WordPress multi-site I will see what why you would like to build your next complex project using this system and we’ll see some real-life examples of its efficient usage so a quick introduction what is your present site it is the ability to create the networks the network of websites running on the single instance of WordPress basically you’ve got a bunch of sites that are using the same code base and database the same WordPress install and you have the one comment Center for it you can have three term maybe million of websites in one install of WordPress how big the number might grow this is exactly the first reason oh I’m sorry I would love to show you how the system may look like it may have something to structure so you have your site calm slash sub-site one your site that come / sub-site – you said that calm / subside three it may have subdomain structure so you have sub site one dot side dot-com sub-site – said that sites that’s calm and so on but the most cool coolest thing that you can even use top level top level domains top level domain names for your multi-site networks so you have site one calm completely different site to calm quite another site three calm that may look like they are not related at all but they are still using the same instance of WordPress they are still in your WordPress multi-site network in all these cases or press multi-site network works the same it’s the place where the things are toasted and where from where you can rule the whole bunch of sites so how many sides you can rule from your WordPress multi-site Network and this is the glacially the first reason to love or press multi-site the scalability to infinity and beyond the there is no limits for number of websites from software site you’ve already seen the impressive numbers of the largest WordPress multi-site network or press calm they have 117 million websites and they are installed another great example is ad blocks or they have got 3 millions of websites my own personal best for now is 116 websites in the world one will press install but the opposite side of such great opportunities is responsibility because when something goes wrong it goes wrong on the whole network and you’re all set go down and this is why we have a super admin role in our WordPress multi-site network this is the second reason to allow for prez multi-site while each site in the network may have its own admin editors subscribers any other user custom user roles like in our regular wordpress install there is an extra row of super administrator that wrote that rule over the whole network he has unlimited access and all capabilities across the network he can easily access any website from the network dashboard and say instead of hook instead of login into each side separately individually he has to take care about just one single database make it make the cups and everything about one code base update WordPress core just once for the whole network update plugins and themes just once and they stole them he in stock has the possibility and they ability to install plugins and activate them across the whole network all for the some specific particular website so the super admin role gives you the full control over the WordPress multi-site network and the local administrator of the sub-site has its has his regular capabilities as in regular present motifs as in regular WordPress instance the organization system is very simple and logical the local administrator can do whatever he wants on his site but inside the boundaries set by super admin and this is the third reason to allow for prez multi-site the federated structure while every site inside WordPress multi-site network exists completely independently it may have its own plugins activated it may have its own theme content posts users media everything but the choice of plugins and themes is predefined by super admin on lis own super admin can have the ability of the capability to install plug-ins but the local administrator can activate it on his website or not the same for the themes the super admin only can install themes but you as administrator of local website can decide whether you activate the theme on your website Oh No and this is the this federated like kind of structure is they hide their heart and soul of WordPress multi-site it makes it possible for super admin to keep everything under the control but still gives the vast opportunities for the customization for for each sub-site independently and makes the system world flexible the most simple example you can sell you can set the default language for the whole network but you still can set the default language another default language for the specific sub-site the same with plugins and themes and everything the opportunity to make the aggregated content is the reason to offer press multi-site number 4 you can have news from site a on the displayed on side B you can have some may be top products from side be displayed on site C you can have network navigation menus you can have maybe Turks from all over the network combined together and display it on the main site basically you can get get any information from any website in any place of your class multi-site network and it’s very handy when you want when your sites are not separated like on wordpress.com but you have a network of related side it’s very useful too and I’ll show you the example how to how it it’s implemented and now the fifth reason to offer press multi-site is the IKEA kitchen principle you can easily add new websites to the network even not in you and not not completely new from scratch but already existing one and when you need you can move it out to the single instance of WordPress it’s very useful when you have the Business Network until you are selling one of the websites you can just move it out to the single instance and say bye-bye and there is no problem and I promise I promise five but there is the six extra reason to offer press multi-site it is we can create network of sites right but we can go even further and create network of networks it will get the complicated your key complicated structure but it will have the same easy system for management and maintenance and this is very cool if you have real complex and big projects now you are thinking like something like okay right but how can I use it and I have some examples for you examples of complex project made who is WordPress multi-site and when you are thinking about WordPress Network the first thing that comes to mind of course blog network and this is the most common use of WordPress multi-site the usual signs up at the main site creates his own blog first for example user that for press that orc write and Stas SAS villain starts to fill it with his thoughts that’s why I multi-site multi-site a daily deal fit for media and the rotors BBC America Europe times blocks are already using it okay another option is service as a solution businesses there are all kinds of examples services solution businesses built on top multisite we’ve already seen the great in our minions example for prez calm it is the example of services a solution business it lets user to get his blog for free it will be my name that wordpress.com but they charges additional fee for some additional features for example for using your top-level domain name name your name comm and this is how different hosting companies mail maybe email marketing companies learners schedulers can use WordPress multi-site ok governmental organizations multi-site is very advantageous when you need a high degree of Independence for local sub sites but you still want them to share some common content that’s why it’s widely used by government organizations with all their wins and departments for example pension funds of Ukraine my native country which is the main pension plan in Ukraine there are 24 regions in Ukraine and each region has its own own pension fund Department during years the local sub sites for each regional Department appeared sporadically without any control they were created by different people in different time and they were administered by are the different people and that’s why I need was to say that they all have used to have different design different content different content management systems content strategy different domain names everything it was completely different websites and in other words it was a total mess but the client wanted all websites of regional departments to be combined under one umbrella so it won’t build a collection of 24 of 24 separate amateurish looking websites but it will be modern efficient governmental portal so there should be unified and unified design for all departments shared control content across all sites but still the ability for every local aid administrator to add local code to add local content the main administrator should have all control over the network but while the local admins should still be able to add local news and information to their sites so naturally naturally or press multi fan and WordPress multi-site has been chosen as a solution the team have done the great work on this project we created a multi-site network and 24 sub sites for each regional department all web sites got the same theme the same Sun all the content from the old regional websites were moved to the newly created once the navigation menu in this network has well interesting structure it looks exactly the same over the whole network but but on their regional subsets some items lead you to the local categories for example news at their local and some items lead you to the main site for example services as they are the same across the whole region’s the advanced custom fields were used to organize the information inside the network and we managed to say this in the synchronization across the network so when the information updates on the main site it gets automatically updated through the whole bunch of sub sites and every every home page of regional department has got the map of Ukraine where they use them divided into into districts where user can see the number of people registered communities local contacts and of course there and their link to the original sub site as this is the pension fund the users are mostly their older person that’s why it may be sometimes there may sometimes be a problems with navigation for them that’s why we set a little reminder pop-up when the user arrives from the regional from this original sub-site to the main site he has tiny pop-up reminding him from what local sub site he has arrived so in case he need to go back he can easily do this and never get lost and WordPress multi-site proved to be the ideal fit to offer their clients requirements the team has done the great work to make this all work smoothly and now pension front of Ukraine has got modern and efficient and easy to use system for all departments I think that it is the great and rare example of government caring about the people and I am proud of being able to do my bit okay but not on the governmental organizations but any other organizations they have your article set up can benefit from WordPress multi-site just to list few it may be may be university universities with all their faculties and students creating their own blogs and here you see the example of Washington State University of Washington State University which is administered by a non WordPress multi-site expert Jeremy felt it might be friend she’s franchises companies for example the main site for them for the parent company and sub sites for the local divisions it may be restaurants coffee shops bars they often have several location within a country or city or even across the globe and while they have some same content for example branding and stuff they would like to have to communicate differently in certain areas for example menu items contacts and allocation and so on and more pres notice ID v this example or pres multi-site can also help you to build the network of multilingual sites a separate site is created for each language and they are all forming the network and it makes administration much easier again it may be a subject subdirectory set up it is a fairly common method the famous cognac brand curve idea is using this this kind of setup they have cookware dot-com /fr for French Courvoisier dot-com / de for dirt and so on awesome domain setup so you have es comm for Spanish and that come for English and if it’s if it is for example Germany based company then it will have just domain that come for the main website or you can have even tal top-level domain names like domain.com for english domain that yes for Spanish and it’s very useful to have different domain names top-level domain names when you are targeting different local searches in Google ranking because every domain name has its own domain Authority and can get higher position in local search by the way you can command you can connect sorry you can also connect the website content between each other for example you have an English version of the post and you have the same post in your Italian version and you have may have them linked to each other or to other different languages if you want but may not if you don’t want to do these ok sorry and also you may want to redirect users from the front and depending on the language that user is that’s used in the browser of the user to them to the sub-site don’t worry if you are thinking of some way to use your press multi-site and I haven’t made I didn’t name it it’s not supposed to be all-inclusive but just to give you the basic idea what WordPress multi-site is capable of so next time when you have a big complex project in front of you you will say hey I know exactly the most efficient way to do this and now guys I have a question to you a little riddle and the one who will give the right answer first will get the special present from me from Ukraine please the riddle is named the website that everyone in this room has been visited every one that is built with for crass multi-site okay it was first hand the the gentleman in squares right right that’s true first camp website is built with WordPress multi-site and it’s another great example of using WordPress multi-site for agony for organizations and like Forgan age of organization events like these thank you and now it’s my turn to answer questions you’re welcome [Applause] this is this home can you hear me okay cool right any questions are sold so this lady I’ll just jump to this lady at the front thanks very much first of all great great talk I have actually many questions so I’ll try and limit it because I’ve been looking at became aware of my decided while ago and I’ve been working on a couple of projects one very recent and the other one I’ve been working on it for about a year because it’s it’s my own project so you know however I then thought that I should move away from multi-site I was I was advised to move away from multi-site because it’s for a and in industry a niche that it needs has complex needs for their websites they’re gonna need you know pop ups are gonna need Mac marketing funnels that might need probably need WooCommerce ECOT you know is digital downloads and things like that so I was advised to not use multi-site because all these things might create conflicts and problems and what you were saying was I wasn’t I hadn’t even realized that actually each website can have a different theme and plan I mean I’m not a developer clearly but seaman plug-in I only ever saw Network activate and deactivate I wasn’t aware that you could exclude plugins and themes from sites so what would you say to that was because could would you advise if you have to run if you have websites that have different needs because because there are actually individual people that don’t know one another but they just belong to the same industry and they have complicated needs would you do you think that I should keep multi-site or walk away from it I should definitely advise you keep multi-site really yes that you’re saying they are they are possible with rapprochement Society and the thing is that you can really activate you you have I haven’t told about this but you have mu plugins directory where you can put plugins that you as super admin would like to activate obligatory across whole network no and no one can deactivate it they will be activated in any in any situation it I don’t know it depends on the network itself it may be patient plugins or something but all are the plugins you add them install them and they can be easily activated or deactivated inside them every side so basically you can have a plug-in installed for one site and not using not none other websites will be using it and for another you have another list off-site a list of plugins installed and there is no problem themes the same thing the same thing you have themes installed but to activate it on the website oh no it’s completely up to you and the WooCommerce is going ok with repressed multi-site you can do this and you can do basically everything that you want to do with WordPress in a multi-site and it has nice documentation and cut-in codex you just go through and there is there was a for sure Sabrina will be around or for the rest of the day so you can probably catch your after and the other questions so we’ve got a multi site which has multiple domains right but I find that I have to when I want to switch from one sub site to another sub site I need to log in and again and again no you don’t have there is cookies you have to set up cookies right so there will be a short across the network and you won’t have to log in and log out this is their the question about the WP config to set in and try it but it’s possible no problems with it even if you have top-level domains not subdirectory or subdomain structure even top-level domains you can do this I’ve interesting seen documentation right yes yes just just took it his question over here oh one second this might be a question about a plug-in rather than about multi sites but if you said about linking in a multilingual site yes the language yes so if you make changes in say the Italian page will that trigger the the person who owns the English page to check that it still come come forward still whichever the most changing the text inside it yeah this is a no no they are not translated automatically no you see and you have an English text which is written by person yeah she’s right and in our they tell in text so when you change the Italian text it won’t affect in any way the English text but they will say linked but and if they’re linked and you change one yeah they warn you that the two now don’t match or is that does that make this possible I just okay it’s okay let me check it and to tell you in their break I it’s not possible to do this but the developer can do this for you it’s a small customization so something like let me know when the linked post has changed so I go back to another tool just and double check on that so it’s possible I think thank you thank you very much I think so this question of the back if we just get that one first okay – first of all the plug-in you can use for multi-site languages called multilingual press well one and there is another one I was trying to find the name I’ll check it and seen the break cool you talked about multiple and multiple networks to use a plug-in for that would you like in for that it’s called it’s called WP networks that’s how it coats okay the one that is properly supported is WP multi networks which is supported by Jo J’s one that core contributors to that okay repeat please w WP multi networks as a plugin that I would recommend if you’re doing mobile network so yes it is the plugin w WP multi networks plugin some github it’s a plugin yeah to make multi-site networks yeah yes adds a UI for it I mean the support Oh why’s it yeah I’m just saying there’s a plugin basically it’s the the only plugin that makes it possible so I have now another way mmm no ocean not not option not to advise it because the only way it makes it that makes possible network of networks is this plugin yeah so you can try it and here is getting advice please they check with from Ukraine yes yes you’ve become the most popular man in the room there you go right there was a question at the front here this gentleman here right we’ve used multi-site for several projects and to be very good but one thing that we’ve never been able to conclusively do is allow sub sites to share the media library of the library it’s a hard question you wait yes Eric is there a conclusive way to do that yeah you can reach and of course you can reach any media any media from any website you can reach from the media from one side from the another but you basically cannot applaud the media from one side to another but you can link them yeah this this is the way how it happens okay thank you you’re welcome yep thank you this was a great talk do you have any recommendations for plugins that we can use to let users have different profiles on different sites for multi-site different profiles on different sites yeah so rather than having one wordpress profile with like one email address and one bio have a different by or a different title or something like that on different sites I guess no because the idea of multi-site if they’re unique users table and when you have you know this right or when you have a profile on one side it’s combined with your profiles on the other side it doesn’t mean that user from one side can access the other sides but it is once for the whole network but I will check if there if there are plugins though I think that it’s totally controversial for the main idea for WordPress multi-site but I will check if there are some additional plugin that makes it possible thank you all right thanks no but why is there any more questions I think we’ve got time for a couple more right back here there’s one of the backhoe that hiya yeah so we build web sites em for sports clubs and often they’ve got an organization or a governing body of that kind of arches over the top of the mall and my question is to do does the main site have any you talks about the concept of the main site does it have any control over the sub sites at all or are they completely independent because the idea of new sharing sometimes they would want to share news that an organization has posted but I don’t think they would be comfortable with the organization having control over their content and I was just wondering if you could block that off and whether that’s built in this is the most coolest thing is the thing about WordPress and is about WordPress multi-site too that you can customize almost everything that you can imagine right so by default you have no control what the the subsets are publishing you have subset and administrated the air can publish whatever he wants but of course you can get some custom plugin you can write it by yourself for audit to check whether this content has for example some words prohibited trade for example yeah or some videos or something and the same way as the lady asked about the identifying about the changes you can be notified about the unwanted content in your network and at all yeah okay thank you okay this will be the last question if there is one is so on No I can’t see anything so once again thank you very much Sabrina
