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What Multisite Can Do
      For You
 Anthony Cole, WordCamp Sydney | 21 July 2012
WordPress Multisite
• Used to be called MU, separate codebase
• Introduced to “core” in 3.0
• Used by everyone from the New York
  Times to Melbourne University
• We’re talking about it the context of use by
  an agency
My Background


• First Job: Lead Developer, Agency in
  Melbourne
• Lots of WordPress.
Then, one day...


• “We have ten sites that need to be
  upgraded”
What Multisite can do for You - Anthony Cole - WordCamp Sydney 2012
What Multisite can do for You - Anthony Cole - WordCamp Sydney 2012
What Multisite can do for You - Anthony Cole - WordCamp Sydney 2012
• “Why don’t we use WordPress Multisite? I
  know how to do that”
NOT RLY
But Why?

• Centralised
• Easy to upgrade
• Efficient, Cost effective
Ask yourself...

• What are you trying to do?
• Overcomplication
• Overheads - is it cost effective?
“Take the red pill”

• Web Hosting
 • ????
• US vs. Australia
 • Who is your target audience?
Hosting
•   Australia

    •   VPS or Shared - I prefer VPS

•   United States

    •   WP Specialists - US based.

        •   WPEngine or Page.ly - Multisite

            •   Page.ly: Enterprise plans, WPEngine supports
                it out of the box
What I did


• Australian Traffic
• I wanted fine grained control over our
  hosting
Story Time

• One Friday night....
 • Server went down at 4AM
 • CPU Bug, not anything to do us
 • Pretty lights
My Philosophy

• Keep it simple
• Don’t overcomplicate
• Do as little as possible
What happens if you make
  things complicated



• It might work, but stability is important
A few small things

• Pingdom - DNS/HTTP Checks
• DNS - Externally Managed
• Web Monitoring
   • Munin & Monit
Let’s Setup Multisite


• wp-config.php
Setup Continued
Tools → Setup Multisite
Setup Continued

• “Setup Network”
• Subdomains or Subfolders?
 • - Subdomains - you’ll need wildcard DNS
    and to configure Apache and nginx
Basic MS Stuff
• Network Admin UI
• When you’re developing plugins, ms-
  functions.php is your friend
• mu-plugins - autoloads everything
• http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/
  2011/11/17/wordpress-multisite-practical-
  functions-methods/
Remember...


• Keep it simple
Environments

• Two environments, exact clones
 • Development
 • Production
Multisite Health

• VCS
 • Use Git or SVN, just something
 • Nothing is bad
 • We used git
Deployment
• Good for complex WordPress setups
• Capistrano
 • WP-Stack - https://github.com/
    markjaquith/WP-Stack
 • WordPress-Skeleton - https://github.com/
    markjaquith/WordPress-Skeleton
Structure is Function

•   multisitewp = repo

    •   two submodules

        •   ms-plugins - Everything was thrown in

        •   ms-themes - twentyten and twentyeleven

            •   themes were submodules of ms-themes
End Result

• A bit messy. Git’s handling of submodules
  isn’t too good.
• If I could go back and do it again, I’d use
  braid and build a tool to manage
  dependencies
Braid

• Ruby gem for dependency management
• Supports git and SVN
• external management
• http://github.com/evilchelu/braid/
Caching


• KEEP IT SIMPLE
What some plugins claim...
LOL
Keep it simple


• wp-super-cache
• APC opcode cache drop in
Uptime


• Pingdom - HTTP and DNS
Backups

• BackupBuddy - basic
 • But not ideal
• Ruby script on github that I forked and
  modified, uses S3 and run on a cron
  • link to script
Hold Up


• What if someone hacks my server?
• Better way: Use an external EC2 instance
Plugins


• ALL THE PLUGINS
Awesome Plugins
• New Blog Defaults http://wordpress.org/
  extend/plugins/wpmu-new-blog-defaults/
• Theme Stats - http://wordpress.org/extend/
  plugins/wordpress-mu-theme-stats/
• WP Debug Bar & Debug Bar Extender
• Domain Mapping - http://wordpress.org/
  extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-
Resources

• http://codex.wordpress.org/
  Create_A_Network
• http://wp.smashingmagazine.com
• http://wpcandy.com
Andrea and Ron
        Rennick
• Awesome people
• @andrea_r and @wpmuguru
• Networks+ Plugin
• Awesome Resources
• http://wpmututorials.com/
What I do

• So, what do I do now?
• I took the red pill
 • Run my own agency
 • kosmonaut.com.au
 • @ksmnaut
Me

• anthonycole.me
• @anthonycole
• anthony@kosmonaut.com.au
Thanks


• I love you all

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What Multisite can do for You - Anthony Cole - WordCamp Sydney 2012