Benefits of Converting Your Membership Websites to a WordPress Multisite

It’s hard to say when I started to use WordPress for my websites. It was likely back around 2010. Before that, I hand coded most of my websites using the basics – HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

I was happy with WordPress especially using themes that cut my coding time expedentially.

And then it happened.

A dilema that caused me to challenge my thinking.

(Side note. No one likes to be in this spot but I will have to say it’s caused me to grow and expand my marketing knowledge)

I had a wordpress membership site that had so many images / assets that it nearly took one hosting package with Siteground PER SITE.

And this year was the year to renew. So I was looking at around $200 per site to renew.

I knew what I needed but had no idea how to solve it – ever been there??

I needed a single repository for ALL my member files.

  But how to do this… I had no idea. At first, I looked into hosting the files on Amazon S3.  This was an option but it was going to take WAY more time to do as I already had a system in place for managing my member files. And then it happened.  The question was – what is a WordPress multisite and can it help me? I learned that a multisite can allow child sites to share content / assets with other child sites.  It also shares the actual plugins / and themes that make it easier to manage. Not only that, but I can update the assets on one site and those changes will also reflect on other network sites (WHOA!). So… I’ve recently converted three of my sites to a WordPress multisite and I could not be more happier with the results.

I’m down to a single hosting plan on Siteground (letting go of the two additional packages).

Not only that, but now I can clone any of my sites in less than a minute!

For other membership site owners, I highly recommend converting your sites to a multisite

What you should know about multisites…

Here are some benefits that you’ll have with using a multisite:

• You can easily access all your sites on a single page
• You can update all your plugins and themes with one single login
• You can close landing pages or membership sites in less than a minute
• You control which themes / plugins are available per site
• Network sites can “share” assets with other sites (huge time saver)
• MOST IMPORTANTLY – You can easily and quickly SCALE your business by cloning your membership site(s) to focus on a specific niche

Ok, there are some cons that I want to cover as well. Some cons include:

• You only get one multisite per hosting package (has to be in your root folder)
• Setup can effect your email if you don’t update your MX records correctly
• You HAVE to backup your database daily and before EVERY udpate (don’t risk this one)
• An unsupported theme can effect ALL your sites
• Certain updates can effect ALL your sites
• All passwords should be very difficult… nearly impossible to hack

So to quickly summarize…

I’ve listed some good / some bad details that come along with the multisite. I’m sure there are more but these are off the top of my head.

In short, I love my multisite and it’s hear to STAY!

One great resource for multisite is WPMU DEV. They have an amazing blog category that covers almost every multisite feature available – plus some amazing plugins in their premium membership. Here’s the link:
https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/category/multisite/

Additional Notes on Multisites:

• Shared hosting is not best practice for building a multisite.  It’s not very secure.  I recommend upgrading your hosting if you choose to build a multisite network.
• SSL certificates can get tricky on multisites.  I use Let’s Encrypt on all my sites.  Siteground makes this easy and I highly recommend as a hosting provider (affiliate link). Make sure to setup your SSL per domain. 

I would love to hear if you have a multisite setup and if you have anything to add!  Please leave a comment below 🙂