susanwrotethis

Hi there, I’ve migrated sites of a dozen or fewer pages in less than 20 minutes without the need for a plugin.

If it’s a small, simple site you can move it pretty quickly by going to Tools > Export on the old site and Tools > Import on the new one. You should set up the theme, plugin, settings, users, etc., first. If you have custom content type created/supported by a particular plugin, you should activate that plugin before trying to import the content.

There are several plugins that can migrate sites, which is useful if you have a larger/more complex installation. I found a list at https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/8-plugins-for-safely-moving-wordpress/. However, some may be more adept than others at migrating a single site from one multisite to another. If you don’t get any further feedback here, you may want to check via the plugin’s support forum for feedback on how well it migrates a single site from multisite.

Hi Kerry, you may want to see whether a single sign-on plugin will suit your needs. I can’t recommend any one in particular, but I know WP OAuth Server has been suggested in a similar case: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/oauth2-provider/. Searches on “WordPress single sign-on” should turn up additional information.

Hi there,

By definition, two installations of WordPress on different hosts can’t be managed via multisite. However, there are tools you can use to manage multiple WordPress installations from one place. The ones that come to mind immediately are MainWP, ManageWP and InfiniteWP. I can’t recommend one in particular; you’ll have to compare the costs and features to see which if any works for you.

Hi Richard,

I’d suggest that the most expedient way to do this will be to by adding a directive to your .htaccess file rather than using a WordPress plugin. My reasoning is that when a visitor goes to your site, the redirect will be found in your .htaccess file before WordPress starts loading. If you use a plugin, WP will have to start loading first for the redirect to be identified and acted on.

There are several tutorials on editing an .htaccess file to force SSL; one is at https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/options-for-ssl-in-wordpress–cms-21995, and it examines other options as well.

If you’re hesitant to touch your .htaccess file, by all means use a plugin instead. You can always deactivate it and edit your .htaccess file down the line.

One thing to check with your hosting service is your SSL certificate. Since you have a standard SSL cert, you may not be able to use it for your subdomain. Normally when multiple domains are involved, a wildcard SSL certificate is going to be necessary.

Hi Doug, I don’t think there’s going to be a quick and neat solution. Try this process out with a tiny site — I strongly recommend you try this on a test multisite and not your production installation — to see if it works. Hopefully others can suggest how to improve on it.

1. Before you do anything else, go to the subsite you’re folding into the main site and create a category equivalent to that subsite’s name. So if it’s https://www.example.com/site1, create the category site1.

2. Go to Posts, select all posts and use the Bulk Actions > Edit to apply that new category to all the posts.

3. Use Tools > Export to export the subsite.

4. Use Tools > Import to import the subsite file into the main site. Since you have all the same users on each site, when you’re prompted to map the old authors to the new ones you shouldn’t encounter any problems there.

5. Rename the subsite you’re moving — so if it was site1, rename it something like site1-old.

6. If everything migrated cleanly, you should find all the posts from the old site at https://www.example.com/categories/site1. To make each post show up at https://www.example.com/site1/post-title, you need to go to Settings > Permalinks and use the custom structure /%category%/%postname%/. Here’s the catch: that’s also going to affect the posts *already* on the main site. If you don’t want 404 errors, you’ll need to set up 301 redirects for these posts.

7. Check the main site for broken links, missing images, etc., and clean up as needed. If you’re using Google Webmaster Tools, you’ll want to keep an eye on it in subsequent weeks to see if it detects any issues you’ve missed.

If you’re talking about a lot of sites and posts, it may be well worth your time and sanity to find a developer who specializes in WP site migrations who can expedite this process via the command line and scripting.

Hi Paul,

Can you describe in a little more detail how you have things set up now? For instance, are you using subdirectories instead of subdomains (I assume so), and are the sites named by students or by class?

If you can give us some examples we may be able to suggest some organization ideas.

Hi there, is this a brand new multisite, or is this a sudden problem with one you’ve had for a while? What version of WP are you on? Is it set up to use subdirectories or subdomains?

There are several things you can check out if you haven’t already done so. The first is your wp-config.php file to make sure the constants you need are defined. Here’s an example from a multisite on my laptop (the DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE value will not be localhost for you if your site’s on a web server). Mine is configured as a subdirectory, not subdomain, installation.

define(‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true);
define(‘MULTISITE’, true);
define(‘ALLOW_SUBDIRECTORY_INSTALL’, true);
define(‘SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL’, false);
define(‘DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE’, ‘localhost’);
define(‘PATH_CURRENT_SITE’, ‘/’);
define(‘SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE’, 1);
define(‘BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE’, 1);

You can also check your PHP error log (or conversely, temporarily set WP_DEBUG in wp-config. php to true) to see if any PHP errors are generated when you get the blank screen after adding a site. Those will help us help you troubleshoot.

Another possible source of grief is your .htaccess file. Try Googling “WordPress .htaccess” for information on how it should be configured.

If you want to post some additional information, we may be able to suggest further places to look.

Hi there, if the page is completely blank and white you may be experiencing the infamous White Screen of Death. The PHP code is experiencing some significant coding problem.

Here are some ways to try to pinpoint the problem:

1. Deactivate the site’s plugins and switch the theme over to a default theme such as Twenty Fifteen. If the site is then working, try changing back the theme and reactivating the plugins one by one until the site breaks again. Once you find the source of the problem you can try adjusting settings, etc., until the site works. If you figure out it’s the theme or a particular plugin, you may want to report the problem to the developers.

2. If you have no luck with that and have access to your PHP error log, trying loading the site as a visitor and then going to the log to see what errors are being logged. That information will help us figure out what’s going on.

3. If you don’t have access to the error log but you can edit your wp-config.php file, briefly set the constant WP_DEBUG to true. Load the blank page and copy out any errors it displays, then set WP_DEBUG back to false. Do this only as a last resort.

Hi there, the way a lot of developers are going these days with sharing content across sites is via the REST API. Documentation may be found at https://v2.wp-api.org. Since you need to share a custom content type, you’ll probably have to do some additional work to make the content available via REST.

About three years ago I was asked about sharing content across sites, and the best solution for that particular project was the FeedWordPress plugin, which can pull in content through its RSS feed. Again, since you’re talking about a custom content type, I’m not sure how well it will work in this case.

Running a script to copy content from one database to another is theoretically possible, but I don’t know that there’s any out of the box solution or how feasible that is when different hosts are involved.

Hi Iain, I just tested https://www.shalalalalee.co.uk on my laptop and an iPhone and I see what you mean. I *think* the issue may be in the theme. Here’s how you can test it out: create a dummy site using that theme and no content to speak of — maybe a line or two of ipsum text in home page and a similar line or two in a text widget in the sidebar. Don’t activate any plugins.

If the responsive features work on the dummy site, then there’s a plugin or something in your content that’s not responsive. You can try copying over the content bit by bit to the dummy site until the responsiveness no longer works, and then you’ll know what needs attention. Leave the plugins off. If it works with all your content, try turning on the plugins one by one until the responsiveness breaks.

If it’s the theme, the responsiveness won’t work correctly straight off. You should bring this to the attention of the theme developer to be resolved. Similarly, if the problem is tied to a plugin, bring it to the attention of the plugin developer.

If the developer doesn’t assist you with the resolution, you can either choose a different theme (or plugin, as the case may be) or, if you feel comfortable writing CSS media queries, attempt to correct the problem on your own.

If you use the Export and Import tools rather than a plugin to migrate a site, this may be helpful: https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/migrating-multiple-blogs-into-wordpress-multisite/, with one exception: I’d recommend making sure the theme and plugins from the subdirectory site are on the multisite BEFORE importing content so you can activate them ASAP.

Hi there, I hope I can help unconfuse you slightly. With multisite your subdirectory sites will not require a physical subdirectory on the server the way you have now.

Multisite enables sites to share the same database and core files, though each site has its own group of tables to store content and settings. It keeps track of which site is which by assigning each a unique ID number. WP knows from the URL which ID to use and loads the theme, plugins, settings and content associated with it.

There ARE separate subdirectories for images and documents uploaded to the Media library for each site. These are in wp_content/uploads/sites — so they’re still inside the multisite installation.

If the site you have in the physical subdirectory is small and simple, you could use Tools > Export to export your content, create a subdirectory site in your multisite and then use Tools > Import on that site to pull in your content. This won’t carry over your settings, though, so you’ll still need to sort out the details.

I’ve been told that Backup Buddy can be used to migrate a site. Information is online at https://ithemes.com/codex/page/BackupBuddy:_Manual_Migration. I haven’t used this myself, so I can’t provide additional advice on that score.

One further bit of information: if you want the subdirectory site in multisite to have the same name as the physical subdirectory, you’re going to have to rename that physical subdirectory since you can’t have two things at the same URL.

Hi there, by site size do you mean the number of pages and posts, how much of their allotted upload space they’ve used, or some other measure?

Hi there. Is it possible that the server is sending the new registration email but that users aren’t receiving it for some reason? Sometimes messages from WordPress may be snagged by spam filters. I’ve had this happen so many times at work with registration emails that I always send a separate message to my users (it’s a multisite serving our employees, so I can find them) to tell them to check their junk mail if they don’t see the registration email.

If that possibility is eliminated, providing more information about the configuration of smtp may be helpful.

Hi Luke, it sounds like you’re looking for a multilingual plugin. I can’t recommend one from firsthand experience, but I’ve heard WPML (https://wpml.org/ — it’s not free) and qTranslate X (https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/qtranslate-x/) mentioned by others.

If this is not what you’re looking for, please provide more details and we’ll see if we can point you in the right direction. You may want to read https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Multilingual_WordPress if you haven’t come across this page yet. It provides additional information and links.