Share a theme and plugins between domains

  • polle001

    (@polle001)


    14 years, 7 months ago

    I need to share a theme with 5 sites and have them use a separate css.

    The idea is to have 5 wordpress installations.

    – Domain 1
    – Domain 2
    – Domain 3
    – Domain 4
    – Domain 5

    The 5 domains will use a theme located in “a directory in x domain” and the 5 domains will have their custom CSS file for little changes.

    Little changes are the logo, colors, etc… nothing big.

    Then when I upgrade something big, for example the complete theme, complete layout, change post width, reorder something, add an announcement under the post, etc…

    The 5 sites will receive the update instantly and I will not have to update 5 websites.

    Also people who visits the 5 sites, will not need to load everything again, just he little changes.

    The same for plugins, have like a pool plugins folder for the plugins that can be shared and single plugins for each domain.

    Can anyone share a solution ?

    Thanks.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Big Bagel

    (@big-bagel)

    14 years, 7 months ago

    You can use a multisite network to create 5 sites under the same wordpress installation and the domain mapping plugin to give each site its own separate domain. Then you can create 5 child themes from the same parent theme and assign a different one to each site.

    Thread Starter polle001

    (@polle001)

    14 years, 7 months ago

    Thanks Big Bagel.

    The problem I see there is that if a site goes down, everything goes down.

    Better to have them stand alone, separate databases, each site with its editors for publishing, uploads directory, etc…

    Will look into those options to see if something else can be done with that.

    Anyone else ?

    Big Bagel

    (@big-bagel)

    14 years, 7 months ago

    What you described really is a multisite install. As long as it’s all on one server/hosting account, it doesn’t really matter if they’re separated; one going down will, in almost every case, take them all down. Separate installs will require separate plugins, themes, updates, logins, etc.

    WordPress.com is just one big multisite installation and it seems pretty stable to me. 🙂

    Thread Starter polle001

    (@polle001)

    14 years, 7 months ago

    I know, but what I am really looking for is to share the theme, so I can make 1 change and all the sites will have that reflected. I don’t want to edit 5 sites, 5 core theme files, 5 css files, etc…

    The same goes for the shared plugins, if by default I use 8 plugins, I want to be able to use it shared in all sites, but be able to use any other extra plugin is needed in an specific site if the case comes up.

    So I am looking for the best solution I can get to accomplish this.
    If anyone else can share something I will really appreciate it.

    Thanks.

    Big Bagel

    (@big-bagel)

    14 years, 7 months ago

    Yes…that’s multisite. You use the same plugin code for the entire network, but you can still enable/disable them for specific sites; you can have one site using every plugin ever made and another using no plugins at all.

    Same goes with themes. If you want them to share the exact same theme but with minor CSS changes, just set all of the sites to use the same theme but have a conditional in the header to add a site specific style sheet. Or use something like this plugin to set some site specific CSS. If every site is using the same theme, you can change something in the theme’s code, and it’ll changes for all sites.

    Thread Starter polle001

    (@polle001)

    14 years, 7 months ago

    Thanks Big Bagel, will try that.

    If anyone else can share more info, please do so.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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