How to Manage Multiple WordPress Sites

Building a website with WordPress is pretty easy. But managing a multitude of WP websites can become quite tedious: Imagine managing 10 different sites and having to log in 10 times, just to make a quick backup of everything!

Fortunately, there is a solution for managing multiple WordPress sites at the same time. We’ll teach you how to set up a network of WordPress websites, and show you some handy tools to manage multiple websites.

Setting up a WordPress Multisite

At some point you might ask yourself if you can manage multiple websites on WordPress? And the answer is yes, of course. There are many tools to help you manage multiple WordPress websites at once – we listed them below for you.

But some of these tools only work if you’ve already installed a network that consists of multiple WP sites. Here’s your quick guide. Before you get started, make sure that…

You have at least one WordPress installation (goes without saying)

You’ve deactivated all of your plugins

You have FTP access to the WordPress website

You’ve backed up your site

Step 1: Edit the wp-config.php file

To create a WordPress network of multiple sites, you must first allow multisite. This works by connecting to your website’s webspace via an FTP client (e.g. FileZilla). There you can access the file wp-config.php in the main directory and enter the following code:

define(‘WPundefinedMULTISITE’, true);

You can go on to save the wp-config.php file, and voilà: You’ve enabled your WordPress installation to add a network of multiple websites. Yes, it really is as easy as that.

Set up the Network in your WordPress Backend

Going on to the next step, so you can create your multiple WordPress installations. In the left column in your WordPress backend, you should now see a new item in the Tools tab called Network Setup.

You can choose between subdomains or subfolders here. This decision is final for the network and cannot be changed later. So you might want to think about it and be 100% sure of your choice.

Note: In terms of search engine optimization we recommend choosing subdirectories. Google could lose track when there are too many different subdomains, which makes crawling more difficult. After you’ve chosen, you can set the network title and email address of the administrator and click Install.

Step 3: Add Code to wp-config.php and .htaccess

After installation, WordPress should show you two code snippets that you need to add to the wp-config.php and .htaccess file. As in step 1, you will need to connect to your WordPress installation using an FTP client. In the wp-config.php and the .htaccess file, you add the respective code. After adding the code to the files, you can save and upload them to the server.

Step 4: Add New Websites

You can now log back into the WordPress backend, and you should notice a few changes in the menu bar. At the top left, just below My sites, you can manage your various WordPress sites via Network Admin. Under Sites, you can add as many new pages as you like.

You can add a new URL (website address), set the website title and language – and bingo, you can add a new website to the WordPress network. That’s about it – the technical steps necessary to set up a WordPress Multisite. Of course, you can now re-enable the plugins that were disabled before the first step, so that your site can continue to run normally.

5 Tools to Manage Multiple WordPress Websites

Of course, there are tools to make your life easier when it comes to managing multiple WordPress sites from one central location. Setting up a multisite is only half the battle. Once the WP network is set up, you’ll want to manage and maintain your websites. The following tools should make it easier for you.

GREYD.Hub – WordPress Management made Easy

Yes, we admit it… this article is also intended to draw attention to our own product. A cornerstone of our GREYD.SUITE is the so-called GREYD.Hub. GREYD.Hub makes managing multiple WordPress sites a breeze. You can import, export, backup, or update multiple WordPress sites at once with just a few clicks.

There are no limits in GREYD.Hub. It doesn’t matter if you only want to manage two WordPress domains or if you need to manage hundreds of WordPress websites. You can even post to multiple WordPress sites at once. We’re especially proud of the fact that with GREYD.Hub you can migrate websites in just 60 seconds! (Yep, you read that right)

ManageWP

The second tool in this list is ManageWP. A tool that allows you to manage multiple WordPress sites from one dashboard.

With ManageWP, you can update all themes and plugins across all your managed domains with just one click. Unlike the previously mentioned GREYD.Hub, with ManageWP you can’t manage your WordPress installations directly in the WordPress backend, but in ManageWP’s in-house backend.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be a disadvantage or advantage. But it’s worth noting, in case multisite management right within WordPress is particularly important to you. Good news for small businesses or agencies: ManageWP is free in its basic version. Basic features, such as plugin updates, are free of charge.

But as soon as you want to use the service as a professional web agency, the premium version with all its features – including cloning and migrating pages – will be much more attractive.

MainWP

MainWP is very similar to the way ManageWP works. This is another tool that helps you manage multiple WordPress websites more easily. Some of MainWP’s free features are only available in ManageWP’s premium version, and vice versa.

A bigger difference with MainWP is that you can install it directly in the WordPress backend using various plugins. This is a plus if you don’t want to leave the familiar WordPress environment. With over 400,000 installations and mostly very positive reviews, MainWP seems to be doing something right.

WP Remote

If the tools we’ve mentioned so far for managing multiple WordPress websites haven’t convinced you, then WP Remote might be the right solution for you. This plugin is a real time saver and stands for high security.

WP Remote calls itself the “Swiss army knife of WordPress website management”. Updates for themes or plugins are included in the free plan with WP Remote, but fully automated backups or migrations are only included in the premium versions. With a cost of $499 per year for the cheapest package, WP Remote is priced slightly higher than the other tools mentioned.

CMS Commander

CMS Commander offers a variety of different features that make it easy for you to manage multiple WordPress sites. Just like with the other tools, it’s characteristic is also one powerful dashboard for a multi website management.

CMS Commander stands out from this list because there is no free version (except for the trial period). If you want to use the tool, you have to pay for it, but in return, you get its full range of features. CMS Commander’s user interface is not the prettiest, so that’s a small disadvantage. All in all, the tool is not inferior to the other management tools we’ve mentioned.

Solid Central 

Solid Central, formerly known as iThemes Syncs, is another plugin that lets you manage multiple WordPress installations from one dashboard. With a well structured interface and all the functionality needed, you can manage and maintain up to 100 sites in one place. The software is reliable for plugin and theme updates and with a monthly subscription that starts at  $6.99, it’s not only a secure but rather price convenient option. 

wildcloud 

Wildcloud is a platform for anyone who wants to build their own WordPress SaaS like a website builder or website-as-a-service. The SaaS based service is different from the other WordPress site management tools because it deploys websites in a multi tenant architecture using serverless container technology. Therefore, it is not multisite-based. 

Every tenant has its own, completely isolated database, which can increase security. Therefore a multi-tenant solution may be more suitable for large projects where security is a top priority. If you want to see for yourself, there is a free 7-day-trial version available. 

By the way, the WordPress Suite from GREYD and Wildcloud complement each other perfectly. Together we ensure full freedom, scalability and flexibility in content creation with a centralized management and a multi tenant architecture.

How to Choose the Right Tool to Manage Multiple WordPress Sites

No matter which tool you choose to manage multiple WordPress websites, it should meet a few minimum requirements.

Here’s a checklist with the most important features to look for when choosing the right tool:

Tips and tricks for a smooth WordPress multisite management 

Now that you technically know how to create and manage multiple websites in WordPress, it is time to talk about efficiency. Since we all know how important site performance and security is for an overall good user experience, there are a few things you can do, to ensure high performance and secure usage in your multisite installations: 

Performance optimization 

• Use a powerful caching plugin that supports both page caching and object caching. When choosing a plugin, be aware that not all caching plugins are suitable for numerous sites. You can store object cache through a redis database and use the http accelerator for web server. The combination of both maximizes the capacity and therefore enhances your multi website management. 
  
• Ever used a Content Delivery Network (CDN)? A CDN is a set of geographically distributed servers. No matter where in the world somebody visits one of your sites, the page is delivered from the nearest server. So integrating a CDN speeds up static files and optimizes loading times. 

Updates and security 

• First and foremost you should perform regular website checks to identify outdated themes, plugins or unused features. Try to keep themes and plugins up to date to minimize security risks. When talking about updates, schedule them at times with low traffic to keep user disruption as low as possible. Plugins like ManageWP are ideal for centralized management of (automated) updates. Soon we will also launch a new monitoring feature in GREYD.Hub that facilitates all the actions that we just mentioned. 
  
• Test updates and patches in staging environments before applying them to live sites. This prevents failure and ensures decent design and functionality.  You can either use a plugin to create a staging site or make use of the GREYD.Hub. Thanks to the migration assistant within the GREYD.Hub setting up a staging environment, importing websites and then migrating it back to the live domain only takes you a few seconds. 
  
• To protect your multisite from data loss you should regularly backup the wp-content folder and database. There are several plugins that offer automated backups for multiple wordpress installations on one server. If you don’t feel comfortable using backup plugins due to possible performance or security issues you can manually backup your multiple wordpress pages in no time using the GREYD.Hub. It’s just one click and you can manually manage all backup options in the backend of your WordPress installations. 

Content synchronization

• If you want to have shared content between several sites within your WordPress multisite network one option is to use a plugin. Plugins like UpdraftPlus or Duplicator let you clone content. However, this is just about moving your websites to another server, not about permanent content synchronization itself. Another option for content synchronization is using a headless CMS. This however can be a bit pricey.  Global Content in GREYD.Suite lets you centralize your content creation and management, just like with a headless CMS. You can therefore save certain elements globally and make them be displayed on multiple websites.

Bottom Line: WP Multisites Have Some Advantages

Of course, the benefits of a WordPress Multisite only really come into play when you need to manage many websites at the same time. In our experience, large companies with several company locations (and several websites for these locations), as well as agencies that manage many websites benefit from this the most.

In that case, a tool that allows you to manage many WP pages in the backend can massively reduce your workload. Updating all pages with a few clicks at the same time, downloading multiple backups and imports can all be done from a central location.

In addition, you don’t have to deal with an endless number of logins and different passwords for the individual pages. Some tools, such as ManageWP and MainWP, specialize exclusively in managing multiple WordPress sites from one dashboard. They have also implemented this solution very well.

However, they are just isolated solutions in the WordPress universe. With GREYD.SUITE, you can manage all of your WP installations from one place. But you can also use this tool to customize the design and content of your multiple WordPress websites from one central location!

Do you have multiple websites that are similar in structure, but have different logos or contact information? You can manage them with GREYD.SUITE from the same dashboard without having to log into different WordPress backends.