Everything seem so prone to problems with multisite

WordPress.com is a multisite. So that’s hundreds.

Generally I haven’t had any issues with good plugins and themes on my network, but without having any idea what you faces, all if can say is that the single sign on and the shared resource of plugins and themes saves me hours. So it’s worth it for me and my six domains ??

Multisite is more than cool. We use it for a couple of weeks and also for a (relatively) small project. We only wanted to use it in order to get 3 different main menus for 3 subsidiaries, but for the same big company. Great side benefit is that we can choose different color schemes for each subsidiary. In this case the subsidiaries are very close, so we did not thought about multisite instantaneously! First we were really terrified of running into incompatibilities, but I can say now: there are more fears than facts. I think a lot of posts with incompatibilities reported are outdated. My advice is to always watch out for the date a bug or disadvantage is reported!

My only bug is what I reported to days ago in this forum, that my pretty permalinks mess up when I set up parent attributes for pages. But I’m optimistic that I’ll fix it the next says for my page.

Have fun with multisite

Malte

Can you send a list of your problems and incompatibilities here! Would give a better picture in order to answer your question better and probably you could get a more objective answer which is more profound. It would be interesting too!

(Sorry I really read that you already debugged after my first answer)

Thank you both ??

Sometimes plugins and themes have an automatic update mechanism, when they are not part of the WP plugin directory. Usually the update prompt is shown in one of the subsites and not in the network dashboard so I don’t know if it is okay to update them from a subsite when in a network environment.

Another issue I had was with graphics that were suddenly gone after mapping domains to subsites. Apparently it had something to do with browser security.

You actually can’t update them from the subsite. WP won’t let you.

Another issue I had was with graphics that were suddenly gone after mapping domains to subsites.

Well … yes. You just changed your URLS so you have to search.replace the posts and change the image URLs too ??

You actually can’t update them from the subsite. WP won’t let you.

Hmmm… It did let me. Could it be because I was logged in as the network admin?

So on the same point, if sometimes update notifications don’t show on the network dashboard, can updating plugins from a sub-site be a solid way of maintaining plugins and themes?

No, there’s no value in the subsite admin (that is domain.com/site/wp-admin or site.domain.com/wp-admin) to change your URLs.

Now there’s a place in the NETWORK admin, but that’s not the site admin and is a bit of my point ?? You have to be careful and pay attention to WHERE you are ??

You also cannot update ANY plugins or themes from the subsites. If you’re able to do that, then you may not actually be using Multisite.

Okay, I think I know where our misunderstanding lays.

When talking about plugins which their update notification is only shown in the WP plugin dashboard – then yes, they cannot be updated elsewhere.

However, I use a theme called Avada and a forms plugin called Gravity Forms. Both of them has their own update system which enables the user to get notified as well as actually run updates from within the plugin’s menu.

Attached is an example of Gravity Forms plugin. I can update it either from the network dashboard as well as from one of the sites. Though it’s easy to assume network update is better, I really wonder if it makes any difference.

Does the update process for all plugins is the same? Is there some kind of a master way which can be used regardless of the setup and the plugin? (like deactivate-delete-upload?)

Thanks ??

https://i61.tinypic.com/2czouo8.png
https://i59.tinypic.com/3462wjm.png

ALWAYS and ONLY update from the network admin. It’s not just BETTER, it’s the way WP will properly update aspects of the plugin that were meant for Multisite.

Even if some plugin, for daft reasons, wants you to per-site update, tell it that it’s stupid and don’t do it. ALWAYS Network Update plugins and themes and core WP when you’re using a network. NEVER do it per-site.

The sole exception here is that if your plugin has a ‘Thanks for updating, click here to update some tables’ THAT is okay per-site.

Okay, got it ??

I guess the only time I recall I didn’t have a choice but to install something from a sub site was when I activated the theme Avada which requires some additional plugins.

After I activated it, I had a prompt to install them and that prompt was showing only on sites that ran the theme.