In episode 150, I chat with Robert Windisch, a prominent developer in the WooCommerce space and an advocate of multi-sites. Robert also is on the team of the popular WordPress plugin, MultilingualPress and CIO at Inpsyde.

Multisite can be a powerful tool when it comes to your online store on WordPress. But we need to understand when it is the right move to use multisite and where that power really lies.

I asked Robert to talk about:

1. What multisites are and the advantages of using them.
2. When multisites became a more integral part of WordPress core and plugins.
3. What WordPress plugins are compatible with multisites.
4. Who should be using multisite on their online store.
5. What challenges to expect when using multisites.
6. When to install multisite on your WordPress online store.

A bit of insight from the podcast:

What is multisites and what are the advantages?

It’s enabling absolute flexibility because you can have stores that look completely different. You can have a store for specific countries. You can have different shipping, different payment methods abled for different sites. That could come in handy if you plan to roll out bigger sites or sites for different markets and languages.

A multisite is also a benefit because, as a super admin, as someone who administrates a multisite, you can disable and enable themes and plugins for these new sites.

For a store, the advantage of using it is more based around whether you need it in different languages, if you need it for a certain audience.

Are there quite a few eCommerce plugins that work with multisite?

Some are fully multisite-compatible, which means that they are aware of multi-site and they actively support that which in different ways. There are others that are incompatible and will break your site.

Some will simply break it by being installed. They will say, okay, we are not supporting multisite. And that’s the end of the conversation.

Others are passively incompatible. They will work with multi-site and you can use them and they are not like doing fancy stuff, simply directly grabbing data to data tables in a database and stuff.

What are some of the challenges?

The challenge of that is that if you if you use a multisite for more than a store, it’s hard to split between the different sites. It’s way harder to achieve an overview in WordPress and you need to switch between the sites all the time.

You need to have a concept before and think about the road in front of you and your sites.

Should I install multisite when I begin building my online store?

If you have a concept before, such as different languages or different markets, then you always should install WordPress and enable multisite just to be ready.

If you just want to earn some money and invest it into your site to hire someone to help you get more traction, get more sales, then you should not tangle yourself up with too many things at once, such as multisite.

Where to Find Robert

Robert on Twitter @nullbytes

Inpsyde

Resources Mentioned by Robert

MultilingualPress plugin

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