Moderator
Jan Dembowski
(@jdembowski)
Forum Moderator and Brute Squad
If you ever want to switch web hosts, having separate installations makes the process easier.
You can alway export your blog out of multisite into WXR and import that back into a fresh standalone WordPress installation. But some things such as galleries don’t export well. Not really a multisite issue; that exists on single exports as well.
Let me get this straight, if a plugin doesn’t support multisite, then I can’t use it at all? Would there be any workaround for this?
Not true, most plugins just work without the author having any knowledge of multisite. They just work right out of the box. I’ve installed plugins from the Add New screen and only had one issue (see next paragraph).
That is of course, not 100% true for all plugins, some can be an issue such as Google Sitemap XML plugin. But in that example there are other plugins that can replace that one.
Are there any other disadvantages that don’t have workarounds in multisite? Is there anything else I should consider when deciding between separate installations and multisite?
You’ve done quite a bit of homework, but give this a read as well as the comments.
http://tech.ipstenu.org/2011/dont-use-wordpress-multisite/
If you are constantly adding and removing plugins and themes, then the network admin may put you off.
Thanks for the reply! There was a lot of food for thought there and I’m leaning towards using multisite but I have one concern that was brought up on the link you had there:
(Under the Hosting Small Client Sites heading…) Also, if he does something weird that spikes his traffic 500% (like last month), it doesn’t affect the rest of my sites.
This was given as a reason NOT to use multisite which seemed somewhat compelling to me, although I’m not sure if it matters considering what I’m planning on doing. I’m not planning on having these blogs connected to each other in any real way other than using the same domain registrar and host and possibly the same WordPress install. Let’s say I’m going to have three sites (these are just examples not my actual domains, ha-ha):
http://www.ilovetardises.com – about TARDISes
http://www.brainswhataretheygoodfor.com – about memory improvement exercises
http://www.fooditswhatsfordinner.com – another food blog
They’re all separate domains, content, look and feel with one user, me 🙂 This seems to be the a big factor with some of the comments on the page you mentioned. A lot of their considerations were maintaining clients sites and I can see why multisite wouldn’t be practical there.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems mine would be an appropriate use of multisite. While upgrading isn’t this huge issue for me it does seems a bit simpler to just update one instance rather than multiple. That said, if one site for some strange reason (hopefully) draws a ton of traffic, will this pose some kind of difficulty that wouldn’t be a problem with separate installs? I just want to be sure that I’m not going to regret this down the line and have a ton of work to separate the sites out later on.
Also, I have played around with multisite a bit on a test server I set up and nothing seems off-putting to me, although it took me awhile to get used to it. Sometimes I got confused whether I was in the Network Admin or Site Admin and was wondering where all the themes went, whoops!
Thanks again!
Moderator
Jan Dembowski
(@jdembowski)
Forum Moderator and Brute Squad
You’re not wrong: I run my blogs on multisite for the same reasons. And as Andrea says, you’ll be fine.
sugarsugar – The reason I put that under a reason not to use MultiSite is than if uptime and resource contention are a big concern, you need to know that your fellow sites on the MultiSite can make or break you 🙂 Don’t go in blind.
I’d use Multisite for what you described, and move out only if I have to 🙂
Thanks everyone, I’m going to take the plunge! 🙂
