What Multisite Can Do for you

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What Multisite Can Do For You Anthony Cole, WordCamp Sydney | 21 July 2012 Sunday, 22 July 12

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WordPress Multisite • Used to be called MU, separate codebase • Introduced to “core” in 3.0 • Used by everyone from the New York Times to Melbourne University • We’re talking about it the context of use by a web agency Sunday, 22 July 12

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My Background • First Job: Lead Developer, Agency in Melbourne • Lots of WordPress. Sunday, 22 July 12

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Then, one day... • “We have ten sites that need to be upgraded” Sunday, 22 July 12

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Sunday, 22 July 12

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Sunday, 22 July 12

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Sunday, 22 July 12

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• “Why don’t we use WordPress Multisite? I know how to do that” Sunday, 22 July 12

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NOT RLY Sunday, 22 July 12

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But Why? • Centralised • Easy to upgrade • Efﬁcient, Cost effective Sunday, 22 July 12

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Ask yourself... • What are you trying to do? • Overcomplication • Overheads - is it cost effective? Sunday, 22 July 12

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“Take the red pill” • Web Hosting • ???? • US vs. Australia • Who is your target audience? Sunday, 22 July 12

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Hosting • Australia • VPS or Shared - I prefer VPS • United States • WP Specialists - US based. • WPEngine or Page.ly - Multisite • Page.ly: Enterprise plans, WPEngine supports it out of the box Sunday, 22 July 12

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What I did • Australian Trafﬁc • I wanted ﬁne grained control over our hosting Sunday, 22 July 12

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Story Time • One Friday night.... • Server went down at 4AM • CPU Bug, not anything to do us • Pretty lights Sunday, 22 July 12

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My Philosophy • Keep it simple • Don’t overcomplicate • Do as little as possible Sunday, 22 July 12

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What happens if you make things complicated • It might work, but stability is important Sunday, 22 July 12

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A few small things • Pingdom - DNS/HTTP Checks • DNS - Externally Managed • Web Monitoring • Munin & Monit Sunday, 22 July 12

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Let’s Setup Multisite • wp-conﬁg.php Sunday, 22 July 12

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Setup Continued Sunday, 22 July 12

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Tools → Setup Multisite Sunday, 22 July 12

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Setup Continued • “Setup Network” • Subdomains or Subfolders? • - Subdomains - you’ll need wildcard DNS and to conﬁgure Apache and nginx Sunday, 22 July 12

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Basic MS Stuff • Network Admin UI • When you’re developing plugins, ms- functions.php is your friend • mu-plugins - autoloads everything • http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/ 2011/11/17/wordpress-multisite-practical- functions-methods/ Sunday, 22 July 12

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Remember... • Keep it simple Sunday, 22 July 12

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Environments • Two environments, exact clones • Development • Production Sunday, 22 July 12

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Multisite Health • VCS • Use Git or SVN, just something • Nothing is bad • We used git Sunday, 22 July 12

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Deployment • Good for complex WordPress setups • Capistrano • WP-Stack - https://github.com/ markjaquith/WP-Stack • WordPress-Skeleton - https://github.com/ markjaquith/WordPress-Skeleton Sunday, 22 July 12

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Structure is Function • multisitewp = repo • two submodules • ms-plugins - Everything was thrown in • ms-themes - twentyten and twentyeleven • themes were submodules of ms-themes Sunday, 22 July 12

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End Result • A bit messy. Git’s handling of submodules isn’t too good. • If I could go back and do it again, I’d use braid and build a tool to manage dependencies Sunday, 22 July 12

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Braid • Ruby gem for dependency management • Supports git and SVN • external management • http://github.com/evilchelu/braid/ Sunday, 22 July 12

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Caching • KEEP IT SIMPLE Sunday, 22 July 12

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What some plugins claim... Sunday, 22 July 12

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LOL Sunday, 22 July 12

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Keep it simple • wp-super-cache • APC opcode cache drop in Sunday, 22 July 12

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Uptime • Pingdom - HTTP and DNS Sunday, 22 July 12

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Backups • BackupBuddy - basic • But not ideal • Ruby script on github that I forked and modiﬁed, uses S3 and run on a cron • https://github.com/anthonycole/simple- s3-backup Sunday, 22 July 12

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Hold Up • What if someone hacks my server? • Better way: Use an external EC2 instance Sunday, 22 July 12

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Plugins • ALL THE PLUGINS Sunday, 22 July 12

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Awesome Plugins • New Blog Defaults http://wordpress.org/extend/ plugins/wpmu-new-blog-defaults/ • Theme Stats - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ wordpress-mu-theme-stats/ • WP Debug Bar & Debug Bar Extender - http:// wordpress.org/extend/plugins/debug-bar/ • Domain Mapping - http://wordpress.org/extend/ plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/ Sunday, 22 July 12

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Resources • http://codex.wordpress.org/ Create_A_Network • http://wp.smashingmagazine.com • http://wpcandy.com Sunday, 22 July 12

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Andrea and Ron Rennick • Awesome people • @andrea_r and @wpmuguru • Networks+ Plugin • Awesome Resources • http://wpmututorials.com/ Sunday, 22 July 12

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What I do • So, what do I do now? • I took the red pill • Run my own agency • kosmonaut.com.au • @ksmnaut Sunday, 22 July 12

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Me • anthonycole.me • @anthonycole • anthony@kosmonaut.com.au Sunday, 22 July 12

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• I love you all Thanks Sunday, 22 July 12