Is MultiSite the right way to go for company site->product sites setup?

  • Rubikant

    (@rubikant)


    9 years, 3 months ago

    I’m part of a very small software company with a company web site. As we only produce a few products, but each of those products are distinctive from each other, we also have a separate domain name registered for each of our products. Most customers are only interested in a particular product, but there are some that are interested in what the company as a whole is up to. Since each product may be attractive to a different core audience, the overall look for each product’s page may differ.

    My site has a primary domain and, currently, the other domains point at sub-folders or sub-domains (whichever I want, or both!). So I have a setup like this:

    MyCompany.com
    ProductA.com
    ProductB.com
    ProductC.com

    where technically ProductA/B/C.com just point to subfolders and/or subdomains of MyCompany.com.

    What I’d like is to post updates about ProductB, for example, and have that update show up on ProductB.com as well as MyCompany.com, but not show up on ProductA.com or ProductC.com. The MyCompany.com page should also have some content exclusive to it alone, related to the company as a whole (like company statements and policies and whatnot), in addition to all the content from the product sites.

    Of course, each ProductX.com page should have a link back to MyCompany.com, for those that are curious about what else the company offers, and MyCompany.com should of course have a link to each of our products.

    This way, customers only interested in a single product can see posts and links and such relevant to that product, and we can advertise the product’s web presence as a single domain name they can directly go to. But customers interested in everything the company is doing currently can go to the main page and see all the news and updates for all our products, in addition to non-product-specific company updates, in one location.

    I figured MultiSite was the way to go, but I’m seeing articles and posts everywhere saying its probably overkill, and that its not a good idea (or natively supported) to have the product sites copying their posts automatically to the company site. But I’m not completely clear on how else to set up the configuration I’m talking about here (I’m sure Categories or Tags or something are involved somehow, but not clear on how to set it up with the different domain names and how to allow each product’s site to have its own look).

    Can anyone give me some direction here, as a total newbie to WordPress? Apologies if this is not the right board to ask this question, I wasn’t sure…

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Axel13

    (@axel13)

    9 years, 3 months ago

    In a single installation you could use different templates to create a different look for each product. This makes it easier to mix content. F.ex. you could make one slider and publish it on all sites, while in a multisite you would need to make the same slider on every site.

    Multisite is used to create separate websites. It could be right for you though. If you f.ex. publish your updates in the blog (posts), you can use the feed to copy content from one site to the other. There probably are plugins available for this, but Feedburner’s Buzzboost makes this easy too.

    To use media from different sites in a multisite you could use the network shared media plugin, but it won’t work for featured images (and probably not for slides either).

    So, basically, I would suggest to check whether you find the right tools to achieve your goal. Perhaps try it out on a test site and see if it all works as you expect. – my2ct.

    GL!

    Thread Starter Rubikant

    (@rubikant)

    9 years, 3 months ago

    Okay, so to flip the question a bit, is it even possible to do what I want WITHOUT MultiSite?

    So if I understand, with MultiSite I would do the following:

    * Set up each product site individually to have a unique appearance, but possibly have to copy some shared assets over between sites, maybe with the help of network shared media plugin.

    * Copy content from each product site to the company site using something like Buzzboost

    * Set each of my domain names to point to the folder or subdomain of the product sites by using wordpress-mu-domain-mapping plugin

    Okay, so if it is possible, how would I accomplish this setup without MultiSite?

    * Okay, so I use templates to make a different look for each product – but how do I separate each product from each other and from the company site so I can apply different templates? Is this what a “Category” does for me?

    * How do I set a primary domain like productB.com to go directly to only the content for that product without the use of MultiSite and the wordpress-mu-domain-mapping plugin? EDIT: I found this – https://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/domain-mapping-system – but it says its old and no longer supported, is there a newer plug-in for this kind of thing? Without something like it, it would seem impossible to do what I need without MultiSite, despite all the warnings I keep seeing about not using MultiSite when you want shared and related content across your categories.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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