Where's the import?

  • I think I have my head wrapped around the concepts of WP Multisite, but I seem to be missing something.

    I can see that WP MS would be useful for, say, someone wanting to build a bunch of sites about National Parks (or whatever) in North America. I don’t know how many there are in Canada, USA, and Mexico, but for argument’s sake, let’s say an even 100.

    So I fire up Excel and make 3 columns. The first has the site name (the name of the park with spaces replaced by underscores) and will become the subfolder or subdomain. The second column is the official name of the park. The third column is a description of the park. I define 100 parks in the Excel sheet, and save it as a CSV file. One line might look like this:

    “Algonquin_Park”,”Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada”,”Natural wilderness a short distance from Ottawa, the capital of Canada.”

    There would be 100 such lines.

    So I go to WP MS and create the host site. I define the plug-ins I want, select the theme, define the default e-mail and other options, and generate the Hello World page for the host site.

    Then I go to the import section and import my CSV file to create my 100 sub-sites.

    Oops. There is no import.

    Am I missing something? Is it hidden away somewhere?

    Am I now supposed to manually create my 100 sites?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • plugin territory. And yes, they exist.

    The multisite feature gives you the ability to create your own site similar to wordpress.COM.

    you know, sign up for a free blog here?

    Also, in the backend, under Super Admin -> Sites, there’s a three0filed area with which it instantly create new sites.

    So I go to WP MS and create the host site. I define the plug-ins I want, select the theme, define the default e-mail and other options, and generate the Hello World page for the host site.

    there’s plugins for that. Also, all plugins are shared, you can already set a default theme and the contents of the hello world post. Have you tried using it yet?

    Really, you’ve got 90% of what you need to build competition for wordpress.com. For free. And ten thousand free plugins to pick from.

    It really helps if you aren’t expecting it work work a certain way right out of the box, but it CAN do exactly what you’re looking for – with the right plugins. ??

    Thread Starter dougbangkok

    (@dougbangkok)

    Thanks for your help. I found a plug-in called “Bulk Create Blogs” which allowed me to create 100 blogs, 20 at a time, from a CSV file. I can open each blog and see the standard WP theme header, and get to the new blog’s dashboard with no problem.

    The next step is to propagate the standard settings and theme and plug-ins to all 100 blogs. I’ve just spent more than 3 hours trying to find out which of the 10,000 available plug-ins would do this, and am now quite frustrated.

    I tried “Core Tweaks WordPress Setup” and that is now causing an error on each blog:

    Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/spkeasy1/public_html/best-dog-advice.com/wp-content/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/all_in_one_seo_pack.php:613) in /home/spkeasy1/public_html/best-dog-advice.com/wp-includes/functions.php on line 830 and 831.

    Sigh.

    I also tried “New WP-MU Blog Defaults” but that only works with new blogs, it doesn’t modify the 100 empty blogs I already have.

    You said “you can already set a default theme”. I have set that for the main blog, but I don’t understand how to propagate that to the 100 sub-blogs. They are all still using the default Twenty-Ten theme.

    Can you be more specific, please? Telling me that one of the 10,000 plug-ins will do what I want is not tremendously helpful.

    You also stated: “in the backend, under Super Admin -> Sites, there’s a three0filed area with which it instantly create new sites”. What is a “three0filed area”?

    The next step is to propagate the standard settings and theme and plug-ins to all 100 blogs. I’ve just spent more than 3 hours trying to find out which of the 10,000 available plug-ins would do this, and am now quite frustrated.

    https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/wpmu-new-blog-defaults/

    I also tried “New WP-MU Blog Defaults” but that only works with new blogs, it doesn’t modify the 100 empty blogs I already have.

    you need to set it up *before* you create the blogs.

    and it will not fill in all the tweaked plugin settings for you.

    You said “you can already set a default theme”. I have set that for the main blog, but I don’t understand how to propagate that to the 100 sub-blogs. They are all still using the default Twenty-Ten theme.

    You also need to do this before you set up the blogs. (see a pattern here?)

    https://wpmututorials.com/how-to/change-the-default-theme-for-sites-without-a-plugin/

    You also stated: “in the backend, under Super Admin -> Sites, there’s a three0filed area with which it instantly create new sites”. What is a “three0filed area”?

    A typo. ??

    A three-field area. name, email, name of site. click a button, the site is created.

    you may want to spend some time reading up on the whole network thing and how it all works before you spend hours doing things backward. ??

    Thread Starter dougbangkok

    (@dougbangkok)

    Thanks for the help.

    Actually I’ve spent more than 10 or 12 hours researching. I’m a programmer and understand PHP and SQL, among other things.

    I can’t really complain about anything as WordPress is free, this forum is free, and your advice is free; I haven’t paid any money to anybody. However, as with a lot of free stuff, the documentation is somewhat lacking.

    I couldn’t find a simple list, saying “If you want to do this, these are the steps”, “If you want to do that, do this instead”. In that regard, this forum is quite helpful.

    I have spent several years on a help desk myself and can empathize.

    So now I know what to do, I will delete what I have done and start over.

    Changing settings/options across 100 multisite blogs you’ve already started can be a snap with the following plugin:

    https://plugins.paidtoblog.com/wpmu-power-tools/

    Finding the right snippets of code can be a bit of search or trial and error, though.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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