Hi all, I’ve been thinking about what kinds of features it would make sense to add to L&L to better support multisites. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
Support blog_id parameter on post, taxonomy and user loops
Add <Loop type=blog> to loop through each multisite instance, perhaps supporting parameter is_main=true/false or something equivalent. Would support nested <Setting /> and <Field from=options />
Add network enable settings so that templates, styles, scripts, layouts and blocks can be enabled (probably read-only) for sites on the network
Add override option (disabled by default) to allow template editing by non-super-admin admins
I’d love to hear any ideas you guys have. I can’t promise we’ll be launching any of these features any time soon, but we haven’t forgotten that some of you run multisites!
I think you four (and probably others I’m missing) have had the benefit of testing out L&L in the context of a multisite. Do you have any multisite-related features that you think should be built into the plugin? Or any feedback on @julia’s suggestions that would make your projects easier/better/more flexible?
I’m not sure what kind of data about be available about a blog/sub-site itself using <Loop type=blog> (or <Loop type=site> but I get that the multisite table is called wp_blogs), but we’d also want some equivalent conditional logic that allowed conditional behavior based on the current site in the loop or the current site on which a template is placed. Maybe something like <If blog name=my_second_site> or <If site=id value=123> although I’m not certain about the syntax.
During the era of CCS (Custom Content Shortcode) era, when data can be called just by adding blog_id=xx in the loop shortcode tag, I’ve used that in wordpress multisite setup to create my own PIM (Product Information Management) just because I thought buying a ready-made system was too expensive (also I’m just being cheap). The main blog being used as centralized data store for just about anything such as product info and attachment files.
Child sites setup can be any regular blog site, info catalog site or a woocommerce setup with a simple cart checkout function, as long as the main blog is made centralized data source, where all the company’s product information are being controlled in 1 place. I also make use of how multisite being able to redirect links for each child site to have own registered domain name, all medias stored in media library in the main blog can just be retrieved in the same Url structure by changing the domain to the child’s domain.
What inspired me to start all these was pimcore; it may not be a logical idea to do that now since pimcore has already evolve so much since it has a large team of professionals building it and my little project was just me alone. But having to achieve my goal with just a plugin in a wordpress was actually pretty impressive.
I shared the above details so to give you guys some ideas and direction where this multisite support may go.
My 2-cents towards wordpress multisite:
Not many uses multisite setup as I know, and that’s what the main reason why the development of multisite is so slow and having almost no solution referrals when bump into issues.
On the bright side, with the concurrent built-in functions, data controlling mechanism across domains and sites relationship built is already quite a unique functions compare to other open-source CMS. Perhaps the initial direction for multisite support in L&L is to focus making data sharing across multisite secured and dynamic, fancy features can come later after all the basic functions is stable.