Inside WordPress VIP’s New Multisite Management Capabilities

Newly launched multisite features offer customers even more control and management capabilities.

The WordPress logo next to a graphic of three houses which symbolizes multisite management capabilities

WordPress VIP’s multisite structure is built to reduce the logistical pain of handling multiple individual applications—enabling multiple sites within a single WordPress instance and database, with centralized control of code, accesses, plugins, and themes.

A multisite is ideal for organizations with:

  • Multiple sites managed by the same people
  • Multiple sites that share themes or plugins
  • Split responsibilities for a site by directory structure 
  • Frequent new site creation
  • Audiences in multiple languages

Benefits of multisite on WordPress VIP

With easy website management, complete access level control, and optimized workflows and resources, WordPress VIP remains the best option for WordPress multisite setups and complex environments. For example, customers can easily use the same WordPress plugins and themes across sites. This helps create a streamlined experience for customers who want to build a multisite configuration that perfectly suits their needs, reduce development resources, and deliver better results, faster. 

WordPress VIP pushes innovation on its platform to satisfy customer needs and solve business challenges. Recently, we’ve made a number of enhancements for our WordPress multisite customers that we’d like to spotlight.

To satisfy customer needs, solve business challenges, and innovate our platform, we’ve added enhancements and granular tools to make it easier to launch individual sites in a network, as well as  download and analyze site information. 

With the new network site management and launch tools, plus new features to extract specific network site data from their database, customers can now optimize the productivity of their technical resources.

Let’s take a deeper dive into what’s new on our platform. 

Network Sites management and launch

We’ve made it easier to launch and manage network sites on WordPress multisite applications. From the Network Sites panel in the WordPress VIP Dashboard, customers can search sites, filter by launch status, and initiate or resume the launch process.

The Network Sites management page, featuring the search, filter, and launch process tools.
New “Launch Status” column in the Network Sites panel

Each individual network site within a WordPress multisite will now have its own launch status, rather than a single launch status for the entire environment. This allows customers to manage and keep track of their network sites with filters that increase insight and visibility. 

Previously, network sites could be launched from the Domains panel. To provide a seamless launch experience, we’ve moved the launch capability to the Network Sites panel. This is where customers now have the ability to:

  • Launch subdirectory network sites
  • Resume a launch that was in progress
  • Go back to a previous step as needed
  • Check the DNS and TLS certificate status within the wizard
  • Mark a site as launched
  • Update already launched sites
The new individual Launch menu within the Network Site launch wizard. The example reads "Launch mytestmultisite.go-vip.net/subdirectory-subsite-four"
Subdirectory launches in the Network Site launch wizard

To streamline the launch experience, we’ve added additional enhancements:

  • An updated DNS step that includes preflight checks to ensure that the DNS record for a domain is reachable and pointing to WordPress VIP.
  • A new TLS certificate step that shows certificate-specific preflights checks, along with an option to provision a Let’s Encrypt certificate.
  • Automatic integration with key services, such as Jetpack, to initiate search content reindexing following domain name changes.

These additions offer customers more flexibility and control on our platform, ensuring WordPress VIP’s multisite structure remains the best place to host a network site environment.

Learn more about launching sites with our Network Sites launch tool.

Download individual network site database backup

With greater flexibility and control in mind, we’re also excited to announce new ways to configure data downloads from the WordPress VIP Dashboard for WordPress multisite applications. These assist customer workflows in local development and data analysis.

Besides existing database export controls, WordPress multisite customers can now configure the download to include tables for a particular network site. 

This allows data to be isolated from a single site for easier filtering, analysis, testing, and launch processes for everything from local development to data analysis. 

The "Configure Download" modal, showing options for network site configuration
“Configure Download” modal

Learn more about downloading backups

Download specific tables from database backups 

Customers can now choose specific tables to download—this works for both WordPress single site and multisite on WordPress VIP.

This feature will save customers time and offers a higher level of control and specificity over data for more targeted usage like analysis, testing, and launch.

Configure your backup copy with specific tables
Configure your backup copy with specific tables and required table names
Configure database backups for WordPress multisites on WordPress VIP

Learn more about downloading specific tables from database backups.

Excited to get started with WordPress multisite? Have an idea for how WordPress VIP can help improve your experience? Get in touch!

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