Now that invasion of the Internet by WordPress is a common knowledge and the same has powered a whole generation of folks to start their own blogs and websites, it’s time for the not-so-technically-gifted folks to be introduced to WordPress multisite.

Whether you are a webmaster who knows his way around WordPress without any sort of skillfulness in PHP, or someone who got his WordPress blog built by a friend/acquaintance and hasn’t been very keen on learning the basic WordPress site set-up skills, WordPress Multisite is a concept that you should be well aware of – simply for the fact that you are a citizen of WordPress city.

In its bare bones, WordPress Multisite serves as a platform for a site owner to set up more than one sub-websites using the root website. Now, you may or may not have known about it, but WordPress multisite is a pricelessly important feature that should be learned about.

WordPress Multisite – What is it, And Do You Need it?

WordPress allows you to build multiple websites using a single backend, and that’s alone worth the price of admission! Managing all your website from only one installation is a feature much sought-after and the Multisite brings it right to you. Now you have the freedom of enabling or disabling this feature, but it’s surely one of the capabilities you can have a go at at least once.

Now, whenever you install a theme or a plugin, the same will run on each and every website on that network, however, there are tools where you can restrict the access to certain plugins to certain users.

• How Would a Multisite Benefit You

To begin with, you can have a host of authors working for your site, but with their own preferred subdomains on the site. As an admin, you hardly need to spend any time setting up their website as they can do so themselves.

The new sub-site can look like:

• myweb.xyz.com
• xyz.com/myweb/

Either way, it is your site that is getting the leverage and this holds great promise for its growth and traffic. The admin of the website has access to a single control panel wherefrom each of the multiple sites can be managed effortlessly.

Now, Multisites have lately been gaining popularity among institutions or businesses that ned to set up an umbrella under which they can place multiple properties. For example:

• A university that needs all colleges under it to be registered under the same domain.
• A restaurant chain that wants every branch to be represented on the same domain, but with a distinct website.
• Different teams in a sports tournament of the likes of EPL or IPL.
• Different centers of the same company located in different parts of the world.
• A TV channel with its own network of sub-channels.

When Do You NOT Need a Multisite

Yes, the prospect of having multiple sites from a single installation is tempting enough for you to take the plunge, but, you should not have them when you are running websites like:

• A business website that advertises your Software/ContentWriting/Hardware services
• A website that showcases your body of work, let’s say, a portfolio blog
• A blog that is meant for articles around your hobbies and other likings

Few Highly Relevant Examples of Multisites

There are some big brands that have already taken the leap and built their own multisites. And you can count on WordPress.com to blast off the trend:

WordPress.com

The biggest multisite network has to be WordPress.com, simply for the fact that every time a blogger creates a blog on WordPress.com, it adds to their multisite network.

Blogs.reuters.com/us

The Reuter blog has made sure that every contributor gets his own share of website through their multisites. Oin the surface, it does appear that the contributors have simply been given a separate section, but they actually have a whole blog dedicated to them.

 

Umaine.edu

As we mentioned in the examples, university websites can really make full use of the Multisite feature, and University of Maine does a darn good job of it.

Evidently, the WordPress Multisite feature is worth the fuss, and if your website fits the bill, waiting won’t suffice.

Author bio – Sarah Parker is a blogger cum WordPress developer. She loves writing information-rich blogs on markup conversions. Currently, she is employed with Designs2HTML Ltd, a PSD to WordPress conversion company that has delivered top-grade markup conversion services since 5 years.