Joe Ponzio

Absolutely! I have 35 sites on one multisite installation, and about ten more individual sites — some WordPress, some not — all on my local machine. At any given time, you can add or remove sites with ease.

You need two things:

1. create Virtual Directories in your Apache configuration file
2. add or remove entries in your Windows hosts file

Your virtual directories can point to any folder on your system (in general) so each folder can act like a new/different server. Give each virtual directory a servername/alias and then add that name/alias to your hosts file. If this is Greek to you, simply Google virtual hosts and windows hosts file to learn how to do it.

Side note: You don’t have to call them all “localhost”. You can name them however you want, even using the live URL. For example, if I’m building https://www.xyzsite.com, I create a folder in my “Sites” folder (located in My Documents, though I’m on a Mac). Then, I create a virtual host to point to that folder, with an alias of https://www.xyzsite.com. Finally, I update my hosts file to point https://www.xyzsite.com to my local IP address. When I open https://www.xyzsite.com in my browser, it loads up the site/files on my local machine.

When I’m ready to go live, I simply upload the files and database and it’s live — no messing with search and replace, changing URLs in the database or content, etc.

We just did this for our multisite installation — moved to a different server. FTP all of the WordPress files over to the new server (we FTP’ed to our computers and then uploaded). Then, do a database dump of the entire database and upload it to the new server’s database. Make sure your database name, username, and password are correct in wp-config.php (if you changed them on the new server).

Update the DNS and then, as Ipstenu said, have a beer!

Don’t forget to add any MX or email records if needed.

It’s a very simply and painless process, assuming the domain names aren’t changing, and happens with no downtime. WordPress and the databases don’t care which server they’re on, and you only need to make changes to the database (in this case) if you’re changing domain names.

My bad on the version. Like Rev says, if you can’t upgrade, you can always go directly to the database (through PHPMyAdmin) and export the tables. Then, install a new version of WordPress and import the tables through PHPMyAdmin.

Rev says “experiment” because there have been significant changes from 2.0.2 through today’s version (3.0.5 and counting). The tables you export may not match the exact structure of the new version. You probably don’t want to import all of the tables — maybe just the posts, taxonomies, and a select few others.

Because you’re making such a huge jump in versions, it won’t be a simple push-button upgrade.

Once you’ve got it working in a newer version, as Rev says, you can then export to XML.

(Alternatively, you can create a script to automatically generate the XML file from your database.)

Do you have the right email settings and does your host allow that type of email connection? For example, GoDaddy’s shared hosting doesn’t allow you to use GMail (or any) SMTP connection — you have to use their custom mail proxy host and port.

Check with your host to see if they’re blocking you from sending mail through PHP scripts and if so, see what alternatives they offer.

applesfaceman has a point. If you are integrating SSL and a payment gateway through your server (ie, if someone enters credit card info on your site), then you need to worry about security as far as your visitors/customers are concerned. If you are having people checkout through a third-party (like PayPal) where they go to that website to enter personal and financial information, then you’ll want to know that their site is secure.

When it comes to security for your visitors, you want to know that, when they send credit card and other information, it’s over a secure line and encrypted. Because they’re doing that at and through PayPal (or wherever), you don’t have to worry about it on your site.

2000+ lines in htaccess is too much. If you need that many lines, you should look at editing the Apache httpd.conf file and putting the appropriate code in the virtual host directives.

You can do nearly anything with a plugin. The problem today is that multisite is fairly new to the plugin development community and it will take time for (1) multisite to grow in popularity and (2) plugin developers to make the appropriate changes. That being said, plugins can be made to do anything, including reading any and all tables in the database.

You can wait for others to do it or, as you hinted at, you can become a multisite plugin creator god and write your own for your custom functionality.

You have to log in to PHPMyAdmin and make changes to the posts and options database tables. Here’s a walkthrough: https://www.newnine.com/blog/112-move-wordpress-to-new-server

Log in as the administrator and you’ll find it under Tools->Export.

Hi alhonore,

You need to visit the support forums at wordpress.com. These are the forums for www.ads-software.com — for people who install WordPress on their own servers.

Same company and software…different support forums.

You’ll need to learn at least some basic PHP to run WordPress for clients. As far as a splash page, you can do as zoonini suggests with the Template or simply create front-page.php or home.php (either one) which will be served up as the home page of the site. Then, you can create your splash page. You can even do it entirely in html and css, but you’ll probably want to learn some PHP so the client has some functionality.

WordPress has a slightly different file structure than you’re probably used to. index.php isn’t the “home” page, but the default page that is called if no other specific template page is created. If you create front-page.php and someone visits the site’s home page, WordPress will first look for front-page.php. If that doesn’t exist, it will fall back to index.php.

See the WordPress Template Heirarchy: https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Hierarchy

(Why learn PHP for this? Even if your splash page is just an image and a menu, your client may need to add or remove items on the menu which means you’ll want to know the PHP code to call the WordPress menu so it’s universal across the site.)

Yes and no. You can have different themes and plugins for different sites — that is no problem. But…the themes and plugins you install are “available” to all sites in the network. That said, only the super-admin can choose a theme for a site and, as super-admin, you can choose to make plugin selection available or unavailable to the administrator of the site.

So yes — you can run totally different sites with completely different themes and plugins from one installation of WordPress. As far as sharing plugins, you can choose to block everyone but the super-admin from being able to see, activate, edit, etc plugins so the decision to “share” a plugins lies solely in your hands.

Don’t forget about tag.php, which WP looks for before falling back to archive.php and finally index.php.

Operating a WordPress website is simple. If you can use e-mail and Microsoft Word, you can manage a WordPress website.

Building a WordPress site can be simple or difficult. It depends on what you want to do. If you want to hand-craft a completely customized website with complete control over every pixel and inch of the screen, it can become quite complex. On the other hand, you can find tons of free WordPress themes that you simply “switch on” and voila! Your website has a new look!

To operate a www.ads-software.com website, you basically need a web host that meets the minimum requirements (PHP, MySQL, etc.). Upload WordPress, install, and you’re online.

From there, adding content or changing the look and functionality can be as simple as pressing a button or as complex as hand-coding custom database queries. Again…it’s entirely up to you.

Looking forward to it!

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The “Share and enjoy” is the Sexy Bookmarks plugin. It’s a custom theme we built. Thanks!