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Multisites on Flywheel

Updated on March 9th, 2023

Flywheel supports multisite on Freelance, Agency, and Custom plans. As with all plans on Flywheel, we calculate plans based on traffic, bandwidth, and disk space limits. Multisite is no different, except that all subsites within your multisite installation cannot exceed your limits when added together.

Note

For more information on plan limits and how they’re calculated, see this help doc.


What is a multisite?

A multisite network (or “Multisite” for short) is a collection of sites that all share the same WordPress installation and database. These sites can also share plugins and themes that can be managed and updated network-wide. Multisite installs are great for projects that include an umbrella site.

Example: 

A restaurant group with multiple locations or a college with multiple departments. Each location or department could be a sub-site of the parent site and management could administer each site from a single WordPress dashboard.

Multisite is not appropriate for all projects and sites. WordPress Multisite networks require a higher level of WordPress developer knowledge to set up and manage.

Due to the fact that these run on shared server resources and a single database, we strongly advise against trying to include too many vastly different child sites inside a single Multisite, especially if there are going to be a lot of different themes or plugins involved. Doing so can cause network-wide performance issues or even downtime.


Enable a multisite

To enable Multisite, visit your site’s Advanced tab and click the Enable Multisite button.


Multisite types

We support both types of multisite installations:

Type Description Example
Sub-directories A path-based network in which on-demand sites use paths example.com/site1
example.com/site2
example.com/site3
Sub-domains A domain-based network in which on-demand sites use subdomains site1.example.com
site2.example.com
site3.example.com

Domain mapping

Additionally Flywheel supports “domain mapping”, which allows you to use multiple unique domains within a single multisite network:

Type Description Example
Domain Mapping A domain-based network in which on-demand sites use unique full domain names example1.com
example2.com
example3.com

Note

As of WordPress version 4.5., it’s possible to implement multisite domain mapping natively. We recommend using this method.

Alternatively, you can use a plugin like WordPress MU Domain Mapping. In this case, you’ll want to reach out to Flywheel support so we can configure your multisite to support the plugin.


Set up a multisite

It’s important to note that a multisite is an advanced WordPress feature and getting it up and running can be a bit tricky, especially in cases where domain mapping is being utilized.

All of the various multisite configuration options must be set correctly, or you’re likely to run into issues related to cookies, redirect loops, or even database connection problems. If you experience issues with your multisite install on Flywheel, check with your developer or contact Flywheel support.


Need help?

If you have any questions our Happiness Engineers are here to help!

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