Multisite Domain Mapping

Im running a web agency and managing a lot of websites. The website that im managing been installed separately with different accounts which mean that everytime i need to update the theme or wordpress i need to login one by one and update them manually.

A central WordPress management platform like ManageWP solves that problem and a whole lot more. ManageWP (and similar tools) provide 1-click login to any of the sites under management… but you don’t even need to do this: you can do most of your management from the central dashboard and even schedule automatic updates for the entire fleet of sites under management.

(It’s not very often that I praise BigDaddy, but they’ve done a very good job of not messing up ManageWP since they acquired it, and what they still offer for free is just so generous.)

So my question is what is the benefits and disadvantages with Multisite Domain Mapping instead to install wordpress sites separately, is it effect SEO using Multisite Domain Mapping?

I’m not deep into SEO to be able to answer that question, but I want to bring out other considerations you’ve probably not considered:

• Not all plugins are compatible with Multisite.
• You’re putting all your clients into one basket. When something breaks in WordPress, ALL your clients are affected. You really need to be on top of your game and know the internals of WordPress and a bit of sysadmin to keep this ship afloat
• Moving a site out of multisite (client leaving, you some encountered incompatibility, etc) can be a pita and will often require a paid plugin or wrangling with the database.
• You’ll quickly realize you or some of your clients might not be able to publish posts with some code or upload some files that they could do previously. That’s because Multisite includes additional layers of security to protect the entire network. You can scale back on some of these restrictions, but then you’re also opening up holes in the entire network.

I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t use Multisite. I’m just trying to bring to your attention that running a Multisite network for DIFFERENT client sites (as opposed to a handful of your personal sites) requires a higher level of attention and know-how than dealing with individual WordPress sites.

And, yeah, I’m personally not a big fun of Multisite for this specific use-case of managing different customer sites, especially as the login problem you mentioned has several DIFFERENT solutions already (single sign-on plugins, central management dashboard, etc).

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by George Appiah. Reason: Fixed a typo